e reader may remember, furnished
much of the childhood details for this biography.]

Whatever may have been Mark Twain's later impression of his brother's
manuscript, its story of failure and disappointment moved him to definite
action at the time.

Several years before, in Hartford, Orion had urged him to make his
publishing contracts on a basis of half profits, instead of on the
royalty plan. Clemens, remembering this, had insisted on such an
arrangement for the publication of 'A Tramp Abroad', and when his first
statement came in he realized that the new contract was very largely to
his advantage. He remembered Orion's anxiety in the matter, and made it
now a valid excuse for placing his brother on a firm financial footing.

Out of the suspicions which you bred in me years ago has grown this
result, to wit: that I shall within the twelve months get $40,000 out of
this Tramp, instead of $20,000. $20,000, after taxes and other expenses
are stripped away, is worth to the investor about $75 a month, so I shall
tell Mr. Perkins [his lawyer and financial agent] to make your check that
amount per month hereafter.... This ends the loan business, and
hereafter you can reflect that you are living not on borrowed money, but
on money which you have squarely earned, and which has no taint or savor
of charity about it, and you can also reflect that the money which you
have been receiving of me is charged against the heavy bill which the
next publisher will have to stand who gets a book of mine.

From that time forward Orion Clemens was worth substantially twenty
thousand dollars--till the day of his death, and, after him, his widow.
Far better was it for him that the endowment be conferred in the form of
an income, than had the capital amount been placed in his hands.

CXXVIII

MARK TWAIN's ABSENT-MINDEDNESS.

A number of amusing incidents have been more or less accurately reported
concerning Mark Twain's dim perception of certain physical surroundings,
and his vague resulting memories--his absent-mindedness, as we say.

It was not that he was inattentive--no man was ever less so if the
subject interested him--but only that the casual, incidental thing seemed
not to find a fixed place in his deeper consciousness.

By no means was Mark Twain's absent-mindedness a development of old age.
On the two occasions following he was in the very heyday of his mental
strength. Especially was it, when he was engaged upon some ab