-book with me. I will draw you a check now for
twenty-five thousand dollars for the first volume of your memoirs,
and will add a like amount for each volume you may write as an advance
royalty payment, and your royalties will continue right along when this
amount has been reached."

Colonel Fred Grant now joined in urging that matters be delayed,
at least until more careful inquiry concerning the possibilities of
publishing could be made.

Clemens left then, and set out on his trip with Cable, turning the whole
matter over to Webster and Colonel Fred for settlement. Meantime, the
word that General Grant was writing his memoirs got into the newspapers
and various publishing propositions came to him. In the end the General
sent over to Philadelphia for his old friend, George W. Childs, and laid
the whole matter before him. Childs said later it was plain that General
Grant, on the score of friendship, if for no other reason, distinctly
wished to give the book to Mark Twain. It seemed not to be a question
of how much money he would make, but of personal feeling entirely.
Webster's complete success with Huck Finn being now demonstrated,
Colonel Fred Grant agreed that he believed Clemens and Webster could
handle the book as profitably as anybody; and after investigation Childs
was of the same opinion. The decision was that the firm of Charles L.
Webster & Co. should have the book, and arrangements for drawing the
contract were made.

General Grant, however, was still somewhat uneasy as to the terms.
He thought he was taking an unfair advantage in receiving so large a
proportion of the profits. He wrote to Clemens, asking him which of his
two propositions--the twenty per cent. gross-royalty or the seventy
per cent. of the net profit--would be the best all around. Clemens sent
Webster to tell him that he believed the simplest, as well as the most
profitable for the author, would be the twenty per cent. arrangement.
Whereupon Grant replied that he would take the alternative; as in that
case, if the book were a failure, and there were no profits, Clemens
would not be obliged to pay him anything. He could not consent to the
thought of receiving twenty per cent. on a book published at a loss.

Meantime, Grant had developed a serious illness. The humiliation of his
business failure had undermined his health. The papers announced his
malady as cancer of the tongue. In a memorandum which Clemens made,
February 26, 1885, he states