ice as much more by the end of the year. Grant made no
further inquiry, and probably never again mentioned the subject to any
one.

When Clemens left, General Grant was sitting, fully dressed, with a
shawl about his shoulders, pencil and paper beside him. It was a picture
that would never fade from the memory. In a later memorandum he says:

I then believed he would live several months. He was still adding
little perfecting details to his book, and preface, among other
things. He was entirely through a few days later. Since then the
lack of any strong interest to employ his mind has enabled the
tedious weariness to kill him. I think his book kept him alive
several months. He was a very great man and superlatively good.

This note was made July 23, 1885, at 10 A.M., on receipt of the news
that General Grant was dead. To Henry Ward Beecher, Clemens wrote:

One day he put his pencil aside and said there was nothing more to
do. If I had been there I could have foretold the shock that struck
the world three days later.

It can be truly said that all the nation mourned. General Grant had no
enemies, political or sectional, in those last days. The old soldier
battling with a deadly disease, yet bravely completing his task, was
a figure at once so pathetic and so noble that no breath of animosity
remained to utter a single word that was not kind.

Memorial services were held from one end of the country to the other.
Those who had followed him in peace or war, those who had fought beside
him or against him, alike paid tribute to his memory. Twichell, from the
mountains of Vermont, wrote:

I suppose I have said to Harmony forty times since I got up here,
"How I wish I could see Mark!" My notion is that between us we could
get ourselves expressed. I have never known any one who could help
me read my own thoughts in such a case as you can and have done many
a time, dear old fellow.

I'd give more to sit on a log with you in the woods this afternoon,
while we twined a wreath together for Launcelot's grave, than
to hear any conceivable eulogy of him pronounced by mortal lips.

The death of Grant so largely and so suddenly augmented the orders for
his Memoirs that it seemed impossible to get the first volume printed in
time for the delivery, which had been promised for December 1st. J. J.
Little had the contract of manufacture, and every available press and