rinting house, and published it through the American
News Company.

In June I sailed in the _Quaker City_ Excursion. I returned in November,
and in Washington found a letter from Elisha Bliss, of the American
Publishing Company of Hartford, offering me five per cent. royalty on a
book which should recount the adventures of the Excursion. In lieu of
the royalty, I was offered the alternative of ten thousand dollars cash
upon delivery of the manuscript. I consulted A. D. Richardson and he
said "take the royalty." I followed his advice and closed with Bliss. By
my contract I was to deliver the manuscript in July of 1868. I wrote the
book in San Francisco and delivered the manuscript within contract time.
Bliss provided a multitude of illustrations for the book, and then
stopped work on it. The contract date for the issue went by, and there
was no explanation of this. Time drifted along and still there was no
explanation. I was lecturing all over the country; and about thirty
times a day, on an average, I was trying to answer this conundrum:

"When is your book coming out?"

I got tired of inventing new answers to that question, and by and by I
got horribly tired of the question itself. Whoever asked it became my
enemy at once, and I was usually almost eager to make that appear.

As soon as I was free of the lecture-field I hastened to Hartford to
make inquiries. Bliss said that the fault was not his; that he wanted to
publish the book but the directors of his Company were staid old fossils
and were afraid of it. They had examined the book, and the majority of
them were of the opinion that there were places in it of a humorous
character. Bliss said the house had never published a book that had a
suspicion like that attaching to it, and that the directors were afraid
that a departure of this kind would seriously injure the house's
reputation; that he was tied hand and foot, and was not permitted to
carry out his contract. One of the directors, a Mr. Drake--at least he
was the remains of what had once been a Mr. Drake--invited me to take a
ride with him in his buggy, and I went along. He was a pathetic old
relic, and his ways and his talk were also pathetic. He had a delicate
purpose in view and it took him some time to hearten himself
sufficiently to carry it out, but at last he accomplished it. He
explained the house's difficulty and distress, as Bliss had already
explained it. Then he frankly threw himself and the house