General Grant worked industriously on his book.  He had a superb memory and worked rapidly.  Webster & Co. offered to supply him with a stenographer, and this proved a great relief.  Sometimes he dictated ten thousand words at a sitting.  It was reported at the time, and it has been stated since, that Grant did not write the Memoirs himself, but only made notes, which were expanded by others.  But this is not true.  General Grant wrote or dictated every word of the story himself, then had the manuscript read aloud to him and made his own revisions.  He wrote against time, for he knew that his disease was fatal.  Fortunately the lease of life granted him was longer than he had hoped for, though the last chapters were written when he could no longer speak, and when weakness and suffering made the labor a heavy one indeed; but he never flinched or faltered, never at any time suggested that the work be finished by another hand.

Early in April General Grant’s condition became very alarming, and on the night of the 3d it was believed he could not live until morning.  But he was not yet ready to surrender.  He rallied and renewed his task; feebly at first, but more perseveringly as each day seemed to bring a little added strength, or perhaps it was only resolution.  Now and then he appeared depressed as to the quality of his product.  Once Colonel Fred Grant suggested to Clemens that if he could encourage the General a little it might be worth while.  Clemens had felt always such a reverence and awe for the great soldier that he had never dreamed of complimenting his literature.

“I was as much surprised as Columbus’s cook could have been to learn that Columbus wanted his opinion as to how Columbus was doing his navigating.”

He did not hesitate to give it, however, and with a clear conscience.  Grant wrote as he had fought; with a simple, straightforward dignity, with a style that is not a style at all but the very absence of it, and therefore the best of all literary methods.  It happened that Clemens had been comparing some of Grant’s chapters with Caesar’s Commentaries, and was able to say, in all sincerity, that the same high merits distinguished both books:  clarity of statement, directness, simplicity, manifest truthfulness, fairness and justice toward friend and foe alike, soldierly candor and frankness, and soldierly avoidance of flowery speech.

“I placed the two books side by side upon the same level,” he said, “and I still think that they belong there.  I learned afterward that General Grant was pleased with this verdict.  It shows that he was just a man, just a human being, just an author.”

Within two months after the agents had gone to work canvassing for the Grant Memoirs—­which is to say by the 1st of May, 1885—­orders for sixty thousand sets had been received, and on that day Mark Twain, in his note-book, made a memorandum estimate of the number of books that the country would require, figuring the grand total at three hundred thousand sets of two volumes each.  Then he says: