In early November 1873 Orion accepted his brother’s check for $100 but rejected his offer of a pension (conditioned on Orion’s settling in Fredonia, New York: see L5 , 470–72). Since then he had remained in New York City, living for most of the period in a cramped attic room at 97 Varick Street—which he rented from “a Methodist preacher” and his wife (the Reverend and Mrs. Charles C. Goss)—and spending no more than $4.50 a week for “lodging, board and washing” (OC to MEC, 18 Nov 73, CU-MARK). He pursued a permanent position as a newspaper proofreader, typesetter, editorial writer, or night reporter, applying at the New York Evening Post, Telegram, and Tribune, among others. At the Tribune, he presented himself as Mark Twain’s brother, unaware that Clemens was feuding with its editor, Whitelaw Reid (see L5 , 367–69). Reid and city editor William Shanks were favorably impressed with a sample article Orion submitted, although, not having met him, they believed he was “a younger brother of Mark Twain, an ambitious youth seeking to climb the ladder of fame” (OC to MEC, 31 Dec 73, CU-MARK). On 1 and 2 January 1874 Shanks met with Orion and gave him at least one reporting assignment, and possibly a week’s tryout. The experiment did not lead to continuing work, and the best job Orion could find was as a two-dollar-a-day substitute proofreader on the Evening Post. Meanwhile, his wife, Mollie, living unhappily in Fredonia with Jane Clemens and Pamela, Annie, and Samuel E. Moffett, occasionally supplemented his meager earnings with five-dollar money orders. The source of those funds is not clear, especially since Mollie had agreed to pay her in-laws “5.00 board that is the hotel price” per week, then had to ask them for credit, and welcomed money from Orion whenever he was able to send it (MEC to OC, 18–22 Oct 73, CU-MARK). Around mid-December Mollie accepted Olivia’s invitation to visit Hartford, and probably stopped en route to see Orion. While Mollie was in Hartford, Olivia assisted Orion with a Christmas gift of $100. On 30 December Orion informed his Fredonia family that on 3 January he would move to the Revere House, at 606 Broadway. On that day Mollie was to come from Hartford and stay with him at the hotel for “a couple of weeks while fixing for housekeeping” (OC to JLC and family, 30 Dec 73, and OC-MEC correspondence, 16 Oct 73–1 Jan 74, CU-MARK; Wilson 1873, 495, 1085; L5 , 300 n. 3).

This was the latest in a series of attempted inventions ( L2 , 198 n. 2; L4 , 153 n. 6; L5 , 89–90 n. 8). Orion was under pressure from his family to put it aside. On 23 November 1873 Jane had written (CU-MARK), imploring him to

On 4 December Orion wrote Mollie: “I wish you fellows wouldn’t carry on so. I am not going to let you and Ma and Annie bully me out of my flying machine. You seem to have made up your minds that a thing can’t be done, and then go at me with the serene confidence of people who have received a revelation from the Almighty” (CU-MARK). But in his 30 December letter to the Fredonia household, he conceded: “Ma, I have stopped the machine, though it was not the real trouble, as you supposed. I will take your advice, though, as to putting off its further prosecution till I get comfortably provided against pecuniary embarrassment” (CU-MARK).

Apparently Clemens’s mother-in-law, Olivia Lewis Langdon, had just left Hartford to return to Elmira via New York City, ending a visit that began in early November 1873 ( L5 , 461). In bringing The Gilded Age to Orion, she was responding to a request he had made in a 25 December letter to Mollie: “After you all get through reading the ‘Gilded Age’ aloud Livy is going to send it to me. If she forgets remind her” (CU-MARK). For details of the critical response to the book, see L5 .

Orion now rented a room or flat at this address, although at the end of 1873 he had been pessimistic about locating something affordable. In a letter of 28 and 29 December, he had informed Mollie of his inability to find “a room for six dollars a week, warmed and lighted,” a rent he thought he could manage. He suggested that if she “were willing to stand the inconvenience of a crowded room and take that of Mrs. Goss’s with a stove till I could do better, I think it would be an improvement on being billeted on kin.” But he concluded, “I have given Mrs. Goss notice that I am going to hunt a flat this week” (CU-MARK).