“General, I am publishing my own book, and by the time yours is ready it is quite possible that I shall have the best equipped subscription establishment in the country.  If you will place your book with my firm —­and I feel that I have at least an equal right in the consideration—­I will pay you twenty per cent. of the list price, or, if you prefer, I will give you seventy per cent. of the net returns and I will pay all office expenses out of my thirty per cent.”

General Grant was really grieved at this proposal.  It seemed to him that here was a man who was offering to bankrupt himself out of pure philanthropy—­a thing not to be permitted.  He intimated that he had asked the Century Company president, Roswell Smith, a careful-headed business man, if he thought his book would pay as well as Sherman’s, which the Scribners had published at a profit to Sherman of twenty-five thousand dollars, and that Smith had been unwilling to guarantee that amount to the author.—­[Mark Twain’s note-book, under date of March, 1885, contains this memorandum:  “Roswell Smith said to me:  ’I’m glad you got the book, Mr. Clemens; glad there was somebody with courage enough to take it, under the circumstances.  What do you think the General wanted to require of me?’

“’He wanted me to insure a sale of twenty-five thousand sets of his book.  I wouldn’t risk such a guarantee on any book that was ever published.’”

Yet Roswell Smith, not so many years later, had so far enlarged his views of subscription publishing that he fearlessly and successfully invested a million dollars or more in a dictionary, regardless of the fact that the market was already thought to be supplied.]

Clemens said: 

“General, I have my check-book with me.  I will draw you a check now for twenty-five thousand dollars for the first volume of your memoirs, and will add a like amount for each volume you may write as an advance royalty payment, and your royalties will continue right along when this amount has been reached.”

Colonel Fred Grant now joined in urging that matters be delayed, at least until more careful inquiry concerning the possibilities of publishing could be made.

Clemens left then, and set out on his trip with Cable, turning the whole matter over to Webster and Colonel Fred for settlement.  Meantime, the word that General Grant was writing his memoirs got into the newspapers and various publishing propositions came to him.  In the end the General sent over to Philadelphia for his old friend, George W. Childs, and laid the whole matter before him.  Childs said later it was plain that General Grant, on the score of friendship, if for no other reason, distinctly wished to give the book to Mark Twain.  It seemed not to be a question of how much money he would make, but of personal feeling entirely.  Webster’s complete success with Huck Finn being now demonstrated, Colonel Fred Grant agreed that he believed Clemens and Webster could handle the book as profitably as anybody; and after investigation Childs was of the same opinion.  The decision was that the firm of Charles L. Webster & Co. should have the book, and arrangements for drawing the contract were made.