emens wrote:

One day he put his pencil aside and said there was nothing more to
do. If I had been there I could have foretold the shock that struck
the world three days later.

It can be truly said that all the nation mourned. General Grant had no
enemies, political or sectional, in those last days. The old soldier
battling with a deadly disease, yet bravely completing his task, was a
figure at once so pathetic and so noble that no breath of animosity
remained to utter a single word that was not kind.

Memorial services were held from one end of the country to the other.
Those who had followed him in peace or war, those who had fought beside
him or against him, alike paid tribute to his memory. Twichell, from the
mountains of Vermont, wrote:

I suppose I have said to Harmony forty times since I got up here,
"How I wish I could see Mark!" My notion is that between us we could
get ourselves expressed. I have never known any one who could help
me read my own thoughts in such a case as you can and have done many
a time, dear old fellow.

I'd give more to sit on a log with you in the woods this afternoon,
while we twined a wreath together for Launcelot's grave, than
to hear any conceivable eulogy of him pronounced by mortal lips.

The death of Grant so largely and so suddenly augmented the orders for
his Memoirs that it seemed impossible to get the first volume printed in
time for the delivery, which had been promised for December 1st. J. J.
Little had the contract of manufacture, and every available press and
bindery was running double time to complete the vast contract.

In the end more than three hundred thousand sets of two volumes each were
sold, and between four hundred and twenty and four hundred and fifty
thousand dollars was paid to Mrs. Grant. The first check of two hundred
thousand dollars, drawn February 27, 1886, remains the largest single
royalty check in history. Mark Twain's prophecy had been almost exactly
verified.

CLVII

MINOR MATTERS OF A GREAT YEAR

The Grant episode, so important in all its phases, naturally overshadowed
other events of 1885. Mark Twain was so deeply absorbed in this great
publishing enterprise that he wasted little thought or energy in other
directions.

Yet there are a few minor things that it seems worth while to remember.
Howells has told something of the Authors' Reading given for the
Longfellow Memorial, an entertai