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FINN." THE GRANT MEMOIRS. MARK TWAIN AT FIFTY.
The year 1885 was in some respects the most important, certainly the
most pleasantly exciting, in Mark Twain's life. It was the year in
which he entered fully into the publishing business and launched one
of the most spectacular of all publishing adventures, The Personal
Memoirs of General U. S. Grant. Clemens had not intended to do
general publishing when he arranged with Webster to become
sales-agent for the Mississippi book, and later general agent for
Huck Finn's adventures; he had intended only to handle his own
books, because he was pretty thoroughly dissatisfied with other
publishing arrangements. Even the Library of Humor, which Howells,
with Clark, of the Courant, had put together for him, he left with
Osgood until that publisher failed, during the spring of 1885.
Certainly he never dreamed of undertaking anything of the
proportions of the Grant book.
He had always believed that Grant could make a book. More than
once, when they had met, he had urged the General to prepare his
memoirs for publication. Howells, in his 'My Mark Twain', tells of
going with Clemens to see Grant, then a member of the ill-fated firm
of Grant and Ward, and how they lunched on beans, bacon and coffee
brought in from a near-by restaurant. It was while they were eating
this soldier fare that Clemens--very likely abetted by Howells
-
-especially urged the great commander to prepare his memoirs. But
Grant had become a financier, as he believed, and the prospect of
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