establishment in the country. If you will place your book with my firm
--and I feel that I have at least an equal right in the consideration--I
will pay you twenty per cent. of the list price, or, if you prefer, I
will give you seventy per cent. of the net returns and I will pay all
office expenses out of my thirty per cent."

General Grant was really grieved at this proposal. It seemed to him that
here was a man who was offering to bankrupt himself out of pure
philanthropy--a thing not to be permitted. He intimated that he had
asked the Century Company president, Roswell Smith, a careful-headed
business man, if he thought his book would pay as well as Sherman's,
which the Scribners had published at a profit to Sherman of twenty-five
thousand dollars, and that Smith had been unwilling to guarantee that
amount to the author.--[Mark Twain's note-book, under date of March,
1885, contains this memorandum: "Roswell Smith said to me: 'I'm glad you
got the book, Mr. Clemens; glad there was somebody with courage enough to
take it, under the circumstances. What do you think the General wanted
to require of me?'

"'He wanted me to insure a sale of twenty-five thousand sets of his book.
I wouldn't risk such a guarantee on any book that was ever published.'"

Yet Roswell Smith, not so many years later, had so far enlarged his views
of subscription publishing that he fearlessly and successfully invested a
million dollars or more in a dictionary, regardless of the fact that the
market was already thought to be supplied.]

Clemens said:

"General, I have my check-book with me. I will draw you a check now for
twenty-five thousand dollars for the first volume of your memoirs, and
will add a like amount for each volume you may write as an advance
royalty payment, and your royalties will continue right along when this
amount has been reached."

Colonel Fred Grant now joined in urging that matters be delayed, at least
until more careful inquiry concerning the possibilities of publishing
could be made.

Clemens left then, and set out on his trip with Cable, turning the whole
matter over to Webster and Colonel Fred for settlement. Meantime, the
word that General Grant was writing his memoirs got into the newspapers
and various publishing propositions came to him. In the end the General
sent over to Philadelphia for his old friend, George W. Childs, and laid
the whole matter before him. Childs said later it was plain that General
Gra