Digital Collections, The New York Public Library Twain, likely on the deck of SS Warrimoo, wasn’t exactly relishing the trip around the world. He embarked on his world tour to pay off his various creditors. Twain’s investment-about $9 million in 2022 money-was a total loss. But the Paige Compositor, a mechanical typesetter, was a disaster. In previous years, the former printer had sunk $300,000 of his (and his wife’s) money into an invention he thought would revolutionize printing, until then very much a manual, labor-intensive industry. The tour and his bad mood had a common cause: Twain was bankrupt. It’s used as the frontispiece for Following the Equator (1897), a travelogue of his year-long round-the-world lecture tour. The picture was likely taken in 1895 on board SS Warrimoo, as Twain was crossing the Pacific from Canada to Australia.
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