e
three of them lunched together, in a little room just out of the office,
on baked beans and coffee, brought in from some near-by restaurant:

The baked beans and coffee were of about the railroad-refreshment
quality; but eating them with Grant was like sitting down to baked
beans and coffee with Julius Caesar, or Alexander, or some other
great Plutarchan captain.

Clemens, also recalling the interview, once added some interesting
details:

"I asked Grant if he wouldn't write a word on a card which Howells could
carry to Washington and hand to the President. But, as usual, General
Grant was his natural self--that is to say, ready and determined to do a
great deal more for you than you could possibly ask him to do. He said
he was going to Washington in a couple of days to dine with the
President, and he would speak to him himself on the subject and make it a
personal matter. Grant was in the humor to talk--he was always in a
humor to talk when no strangers were present--he forced us to stay and
take luncheon in a private room, and continued to talk all the time. It
was baked beans, but how 'he sits and towers,' Howells said, quoting
Dame. Grant remembered 'Squibob' Derby (John Phoenix) at West Point very
well. He said that Derby was always drawing caricatures of the
professors and playing jokes on every body. He told a thing which I had
heard before but had never seen in print. A professor questioning a
class concerning certain particulars of a possible siege said, 'Suppose a
thousand men are besieging a fortress whose equipment of provisions is
so-and-so; it is a military axiom that at the end of forty-five days the
fort will surrender. Now, young men, if any of you were in command of
such a fortress, how would you proceed?'

"Derby held up his hand in token that he had an answer for that question.
He said, 'I would march out, let the enemy in, and at the end of
forty-five days I would change places with him.'

"I tried hard, during that interview, to get General Grant to agree to
write his personal memoirs for publication, but he wouldn't listen to the
suggestion. His inborn diffidence made him shrink from voluntarily
coming before the public and placing himself under criticism as an
author. He had no confidence in his ability to write well; whereas we
all know now that he possessed an admirable literary gift and style. He
was also sure that the book would have no sale, and of course that would
b