The Autobiography of Mark Twain - Mark Twain (best english books to read .TXT) 📗

which the publisher would not be absolutely sure of getting back again. Some time afterward, when the contract was being drawn and the question was whether it should be 20-percent royalty or 70 percent of the profits, he inquired which of the two propositions would be the best all round. I sent Webster to tell him that the 20-percent royalty would be the best for him, for the reason that it was the surest, the simplest, the easiest to keep track of, and, better still, would pay him a trifle more, no doubt, than with the other plan.

He thought the matter over and then said in substance that by the 20-percent plan he would be sure to make, while the publisher might possibly lose; therefore, he would not have the royalty plan, but the 70-percent-profit plan, since, if there were profits, he could not then get them all, but the publisher would be sure to get 30 percent of it.

This was just like General Grant. It was absolutely impossible for him to entertain for a moment any proposition which might prosper him at the risk of any other man.

After the contract had been drawn and signed, I remembered I had offered to advance the general some money and that he had said he might possibly need $10,000 before the book issued. The circumstance had been forgotten and was not in the contract, but I had the luck to remember it before leaving town; so I went back and told Col. Fred Grant to draw upon Webster for the $10,000 whenever it should be wanted.

That was the only thing forgotten in the contract, and it was now rectified and everything was smooth.

And now I come to a circumstance which I have never spoken of and which cannot be known for many years to come, for this paragraph must not be published until the mention of so private a matter cannot offend any living person.

The contract was drawn by the great law firm of Alexander & Green, on my part, and Clarence Seward, son of Mr. Lincoln’s Secretary of State, on the part of General Grant.

Appended to the contract was a transfer of the book to General Grant’s wife, and the transfer from her to my firm for the consideration of $1,000 in hand paid.

This was to prevent the general’s creditors from seizing the proceeds of the book.

Webster had said, “Yes,” when the sum named was a thousand dollars, and, after he had signed the contract and was leaving the law office, he mentioned, incidentally, that the thousand dollars was of course a mere formality in such a paper, and meant nothing. But Mr. Seward took him privately aside and said, “No, it means just what it says⁠—for the general’s family have not a penny in the house and they are waiting at this moment with lively anxiety for that small sum of money.”

Webster was astonished. He drew a check at once and Mr. Seward gave it to a messenger boy and told him to take it swiftly⁠—by the speediest route⁠—to General Grant’s house, and not let the grass grow under his feet.

It was a shameful thing that the man who had saved this country and its government from destruction should still be in a position where so small a sum⁠—so trivial an amount⁠—as $1,000 could be looked upon as a godsend. Everybody knew that the general was in reduced circumstances, but what a storm would have gone up all over the land if the people could have known that his poverty had reached such a point as this.

The newspapers all over the land had been lauding the princely generosity of the Century people in paying General Grant the goodly sum of $1,500 for three magazine articles, whereas, if they had paid him the amount which was his just due for them, he would still have been able to keep his carriage and not have been worrying about $1,000. Neither the newspapers nor the public were probably aware that fifty-five years earlier the publishers of an annual in London had offered little Tom Moore twice $1,500 for two articles and had told him to make them long or short and to write about whatever he pleased. The difference between the financial value of any article written by Tom Moore in his best day and a war article written by General Grant in these days was about as one to fifty.

To go back awhile. After being a month or two in the West, during the winter of 1884⁠–⁠85, I returned to the East, reaching New York about the 20th of February.

No agreement had at that time been reached as to the contract, but I called at General Grant’s house simply to inquire after his health, for I had seen reports in the newspapers that he had been sick and confined to his house for some time.

The last time I had been at his house he told me that he had stopped smoking because of the trouble in his throat, which the physicians had said would be quickest cured in that way. But while I was in the West the newspapers had reported that this throat affection was believed to be in the nature of a cancer. However, on the morning of my arrival in New York the newspapers had reported that the physicians had said that the general was a great deal better than he had been and was getting along very comfortably. So, when I called at the house, I went up to the general’s room and shook hands and said I was very glad he was so much better and so well along on the road to perfect health again.

He smiled and said, “If it were only true.”

Of course I was both surprised and discomfited, and asked his physician, Doctor Douglas, if the general were in truth not progressing as well as I had supposed. He intimated that the reports were rather rose colored and that this affection was no doubt a cancer.

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