> The remaining two were purchased by the Mergenthaler company in 1898, with one being presented to Cornell University and the other was to Columbia University. The Columbia machine is believed to have been scrapped during World War II as part of a wartime scrap metal drive, while the Cornell machine was returned to Mergenthaler and later donated to the Mark Twain Home in Hartford, Connecticut, where it remains on display to this day – the last remnant of a curious and disastrous chapter in the great author’s life.
I recommend this as a pilgrimage. They have a tour with a very fine actress playing his housekeeper, properly researched and intelligently done, he would have approved.
The backdrop of this investment is not as simple and pithy as HN makes it. Twain was no fool and no gambler.