t
little memory of it in later years.

There was some further correspondence with Bliss, then about the 21st
of January (1868) Clemens made a trip to Hartford to settle the matter.
Bliss had been particularly anxious to meet him, personally and was a
trifle disappointed with his appearance. Mark Twain's traveling costume
was neither new nor neat, and he was smoking steadily a pipe of power.
His general make-up was hardly impressive.

Bliss's disturbance was momentary. Once he began to talk the rest did
not matter. He was the author of those letters, and Bliss decided that
personally he was even greater than they. The publisher, confined to his
home with illness, offered him the hospitality of his household. Also,
he made him two propositions: he would pay him ten thousand dollars cash
for his copyright, or he would pay five per cent. royalty, which was
a fourth more than Richardson had received. He advised the latter
arrangement.

Clemens had already taken advice and had discussed the project a good
deal with Richardson. The ten thousand dollars was a heavy temptation,
but he withstood it and closed on the royalty basis--"the best business
judgment I ever displayed," he was wont to declare. A letter written
to his mother and sister near the end of this Hartford stay is worth
quoting pretty fully here, for the information and "character" it
contains. It bears date of January 24th.

This is a good week for me. I stopped in the Herald office, as I
came through New York, to see the boys on the staff, and young James
Gordon Bennett asked me to write twice a week, impersonally, for the
Herald, and said if I would I might have full swing, and about
anybody and everything I wanted to. I said I must have the very
fullest possible swing, and he said, "All right." I said, "It's a
contract--" and that settled that matter.

I'll make it a point to write one letter a week anyhow. But the
best thing that has happened is here. This great American
Publishing Company kept on trying to bargain with me for a book till
I thought I would cut the matter short by coming up for a talk. I
met Henry Ward Beecher in Brooklyn, and with his usual whole-souled
way of dropping his own work to give other people a lift when he
gets a chance, he said: "Now, here, you are one of the talented men
of the age--nobody is going to deny that--but in matters of business
I don't suppose you kno