k Twain once referred to Orion's autobiography in print
and his own disappointment in it, which he attributed to Orion's having
departed from the idea of frank and unrestricted confession to exalt
himself as a hero-a statement altogether unwarranted, and due to one of
those curious confusions of memory and imagination that more than once
resulted in a complete reversal of the facts. A quantity of Orion's
manuscript has been lost and destroyed, but enough fragments of it
remain to show its fidelity to the original plan. It is just one long
record of fleeting hope, futile effort, and humiliation. It is the story
of a life of disappointment; of a man who has been defeated and beaten
down and crushed by the world until he has nothing but confession left
to surrender.--[Howells, in his letter concerning the opening chapters,
said that they would some day make good material. Fortunately the
earliest of these chapters were preserved, and, as the 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.