s more than once in his home
letters, and it is clear that he wavered.

Judge Field said if I wanted the place he could pledge me the
President's appointment, and Senator Corners said he would guarantee
me the Senate's confirmation. It was a great temptation, but it
would render it impossible to fill my book contract, and I had to
drop the idea....

And besides I did not want the office.

He made this final decision when he heard that the chief editor of the
Alta wanted the place, and he now threw his influence in that quarter.
"I would not take ten thousand dollars out of a friend's pocket," he
said.

But then suddenly came the news from Goodman that the Alta publishers
had copyrighted his Quaker City letters and proposed getting them out in
a book, to reimburse themselves still further on their investment. This
was sharper than a serpent's tooth. Clemens got confirmation of the
report by telegraph. By the same medium he protested, but to no purpose.
Then he wrote a letter and sat down to wait. He reported his troubles to
Orion:

I have made a superb contract for a book, and have prepared the
first ten chapters of the sixty or eighty, but I will bet it never
sees the light. Don't you let the folks at home hear that. That
thieving Alta copyrighted the letters, and now shows no disposition
to let me use them. I have done all I can by telegraph, and now
await the final result by mail. I only charged them for 50 letters
what (even in) greenbacks would amount to less than two thousand
dollars, intending to write a good deal for high-priced Eastern
papers, and now they want to publish my letters in book form
themselves to get back that pitiful sum.

Orion was by this time back from Nevada, setting type in St. Louis. He
was full of schemes, as usual, and his brother counsels him freely. Then
he says:

We chase phantoms half the days of our lives. It is well if we
learn wisdom even then, and save the other half.

I am in for it. I must go on chasing them, until I marry, then I am
done with literature and all other bosh--that is, literature
wherewith to please the general public.

I shall write to please myself then.

He closes by saying that he rather expects to go with Anson Burlingame
on the Chinese embassy. Clearly he was pretty hopeless as to his book
prospects.

His first meeting with General Grant occurred just at this