You can have the first say (that is plain enough) on that or any other book I may prepare for the press, as long as you deal in a fair, open, and honorable way with me.  I do not think you will ever find me doing otherwise with you.  I can get a book ready for you any time you want it; but you can’t want one before this time next year, so I have plenty of time.

Bliss was only temporarily appeased.  He realized that to get a book ready by the time he wanted it-a book of sufficient size and importance to maintain the pace set by the Innocents meant rather more immediate action than his author seemed to contemplate.  Futhermore, he knew that other publishers were besieging the author of the Innocents; a disquieting thought.  In early July, when Mr. Langdon’s condition had temporarily improved, Bliss had come to Elmira and proposed a book which should relate the author’s travels and experiences in the Far West.  It was an inviting subject, and Clemens, by this time more attracted by the idea of authorship and its rewards, readily enough agreed to undertake the volume.  He had been offered half profits, and suggested that the new contract be arranged upon these terms.  Bliss, figuring on a sale of 100,000 copies, proposed seven and one-half per cent. royalty as an equivalent, and the contract was so arranged.  In after-years, when the cost of manufacture and paper had become greatly reduced, Clemens, with but a confused notion of business details, believed he had been misled by Bliss in this contract, and was bitter and resentful accordingly.  The figures remain, however, to show that Bliss dealt fairly.  Seven and one-half per cent. of a subscription book did represent half profits up to 100,000 copies when the contract was drawn; but it required ten years to sell that quantity, and in that time conditions had changed.  Bliss could hardly foresee that these things would be so, and as he was dead when the book touched the 100,000 mark he could not explain or readjust matters, whatever might have been his inclination.

Clemens was pleased enough with the contract when it was made.  To Orion he wrote July 15 (1870): 

Per contract I must have another six-hundred-page book ready for my publisher January 1st, and I only began it to-day.  The subject of it is a secret, because I may possibly change it.  But as it stands I propose to do up Nevada and California, beginning with the trip across the country in the stage.  Have you a memorandum of the route we took, or the names of any of the stations we stopped at?  Do you remember any of the scenes, names, incidents, or adventures of the coach trip?—­for I remember next to nothing about the matter.  Jot down a foolscap page of items for me.  I wish I could have two days’ talk with you.

    I suppose I am to get the biggest copyright this time ever paid on a
    subscription book in this country.

The work so promptly begun made little progress.  Hard days of illness and sorrow followed, and it was not until September that it was really under way.  His natural enthusiasm over any new undertaking possessed him.  On the 4th he wrote Bliss: