won't. So, it is my decision,--after thinking over and rejecting the
idea of trying to buy permission of the Harpers for $2,500 to use your
name, (a proposition which they would hate to refuse to a man in a
perplexed position, and yet would naturally have to refuse it,) to
pigeon-hole the "Library": not destroy it, but merely pigeon-hole it and
wait a few years and see what new notion Providence will take concerning
it. He will not desert us now, after putting in four licks to our one on
this book all this time. It really seems in a sense discourteous not to
call it "Providence's Library of Humor."

Now that deal is all settled, the next question is, do you need and must
you require that $2,000 now? Since last March, you know, I am carrying a
mighty load, solitary and alone--General Grant's book--and must carry it
till the first volume is 30 days old (Jan. 1st) before the relief money
will begin to flow in. From now till the first of January every dollar
is as valuable to me as it could be to a famishing tramp. If you can
wait till then--I mean without discomfort, without inconvenience--it
will be a large accommodation to me; but I will not allow you to do this
favor if it will discommode you. So, speak right out, frankly, and
if you need the money I will go out on the highway and get it, using
violence, if necessary.

Mind, I am not in financial difficulties, and am not going to be. I am
merely a starving beggar standing outside the door of plenty--obstructed
by a Yale time-lock which is set for Jan. 1st. I can stand it, and
stand it perfectly well; but the days do seem to fool along considerable
slower than they used to.

I am mighty glad you are with the Harpers. I have noticed that good men
in their employ go there to stay.

Yours ever,
MARK.

In the next letter we begin to get some idea of the size of Mark
Twain's first publishing venture, and a brief summary of results may
not be out of place here.

The Grant Life was issued in two volumes. In the early months of
the year when the agents' canvass was just beginning, Mark Twain,
with what seems now almost clairvoyant vision, prophesied a sale of
three hundred thousand sets. The actual sales ran somewhat more
than this number. On February 27, 1886, Charles L. Webster & Co.
paid to Mrs. Grant the largest single royalty check in the histor