Mark Twain was now a successful publisher, but his success thus far was nothing to what lay just ahead.  One evening he learned that General Grant, after heavy financial disaster, had begun writing the memoirs which he (Clemens) had urged him to undertake some years before.  Next morning he called on the General to learn the particulars.  Grant had contributed some articles to the “Century” war series, and felt in a mood to continue the work.  He had discussed with the “Century” publishers the matter of a book.  Clemens suggested that such a book should be sold only by subscription and prophesied its enormous success.  General Grant was less sure.  His need of money was very great and he was anxious to get as much return as possible, but his faith was not large.  He was inclined to make no special efforts in the matter of publication.  But Mark Twain prevailed.  Like his own Colonel Sellers, he talked glowingly and eloquently of millions.  He first offered to direct the general to his own former subscription publisher, at Hartford, then finally proposed to publish it himself, offering Grant seventy per cent. of the net returns, and to pay all office expenses out of his own share.

Of course there could be nothing for any publisher in such an arrangement unless the sales were enormous.  General Grant realized this, and at first refused to consent.  Here was a friend offering to bankrupt himself out of pure philanthropy, a thing he could not permit.  But Mark Twain came again and again, and finally persuaded him that purely as business proposition the offer was warranted by the certainty of great sales.

So the firm of Charles L. Webster & Co. undertook the Grant book, and the old soldier, broken in health and fortune, was liberally provided with means that would enable him to finish his task with his mind at peace.  He devoted himself steadily to the work—­at first writing by hand, then dictating to a stenographer that Webster & Co. provided.  His disease, cancer, made fierce ravages, but he “fought it out on that line,” and wrote the last pages of his memoirs by hand when he could no longer speak aloud.  Mark Twain was much with him, and cheered him with anecdotes and news of the advance sale of his book.  In one of his memoranda of that time Clemens wrote: 

“To-day (May 26) talked with General Grant about his and my first great Missouri campaign, in 1861.  He surprised an empty camp near Florida, Missouri, on Salt River, which I had been occupying a day or two before.  How near he came to playing the d—­ with his future publisher.”

At Mount McGregor, a few weeks before the end, General Grant asked if any estimate could now be made of the sum which his family would obtain from his work, and was deeply comforted by Clemens’s prompt reply that more than one hundred thousand sets had already been sold, the author’s share of which would exceed one hundred and fifty thousand dollars.  Clemens added that the gross return would probably be twice as much more.