While he was talking Colonel Grant said: 

“Father is letting you see that the Grant family are a pack of fools, Mr. Clemens.”

The General objected to this statement.  He said that the facts could be produced which would show that when Ward laid siege to a man he was pretty certain to turn out to be a fool; as much of a fool as any of the Grant family.  He said that nobody could call the president of the Erie Railroad a fool, yet Ward had beguiled him of eight hundred thousand dollars, robbed him of every cent of it.

He cited another man that no one could call a fool who had invested in Ward to the extent of half a million.  He went on to recall many such cases.  He told of one man who had come to the office on the eve of departure for Europe and handed Ward a check for fifty thousand dollars, saying: 

“I have no use for it at present.  See what you can do with it for me.”  By and by this investor, returning from Europe, dropped in and said: 

“Well, did anything happen?”

Ward indifferently turned to his private ledger, consulted it, then drew a check for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and handed it over, with the casual remark: 

“Well, yes, something happened; not much yet—­a little too soon.”

The man stared at the check, then thrust it back into Ward’s hand.  “That’s all right.  It’s plenty good enough for me.  Set that hen again,” and left the place.

Of course Ward made no investments.  His was the first playing on a colossal scale of the now worn-out “get rich quick” confidence game.  Such dividends as were made came out of the principal.  Ward was the Napoleon of that game, whether he invented it or not.  Clemens agreed that, as far as himself or any of his relatives were concerned, they would undoubtedly have trusted Ward.

Colonel Grant followed him to the door when he left, and told him that the physicians feared his father might not live more than a few weeks longer, but that meantime he had been writing steadily, and that the first volume was complete and fully half the second.  Three days later the formal contract was closed, and Webster & Co. promptly advanced.  General Grant ten thousand dollars for imminent demands, a welcome arrangement, for Grant’s debts and expenses were many, and his available resources restricted to the Century payments for his articles.

Immediately the office of Webster & Co. was warm with affairs.  Reporters were running hot-foot for news of the great contract by which Mark Twain was to publish the life of General Grant.  No publishing enterprise of such vast moment had ever been undertaken, and no publishing event, before or since, ever received the amount of newspaper comment.  The names of General Grant and Mark Twain associated would command columns, whatever the event, and that Mark Twain was to become the publisher of Grant’s own story of his battles was of unprecedented importance.