It made me feel good to be one or the other—but he didn’t say which.
ISSUING THE IN VITATIONS.
GRANT.
There—that is the greatest man I have ever had the privilege of knowing personally. And I have not known a man with a kinder nature or a purer character. He was called the Silent Man—the Sphynx—and he was that, in public, but not in private. There he was a fluent and able talker—with a large sense of humor, and a most rare gift of compacting meaty things into phrases of stunning felicity—such as those which he used to flash out from his campaigns and send flying abroad over the globe—“Will fight it out on this line if it takes all summer.”
Along with his other great gifts he had that rare sort of memory—the memory which remembers names and faces. [Anecdote.]
I published his book—I say I, because I was the bulk of the firm of Charles L. Webster & Co, publishers. That is, I furnished the money, not the brains. Nobody furnished the brains. The book published itself—it was strong enough to go alone—it needed no help.
The last time I saw Gen. Grant alive was a few days before his death. He knew that his end was very near. He was sitting in his chair, fully dressed; his book was finished, and he was putting one or two finishing touches to it with his pencil—the last work he was ever to do. He had been for some time in very straightened circumstances,—had lost everything he had in the world through the depredations of the infamous firm which had not only reduced him to penury but had brought shame and humiliation upon him, and now all his solicitude was for his family—he had written his book solely that they might not be left in the grip of hard fortune when he was gone. He had said when he first began to write the book that he hoped it would realize as much as General Sherman’s memoirs had produced; he said that that was $25,000, and he would be satisfied with that. He asked me if I thought his book would do as well. And now at death’s door the thought of his family was at his heart and he came back to that matter once more; and he wrote a question on his tablets, Could I give him an idea this early of how much the book might yield? He wrote because he could not speak. The cancer in his throat had done its work—in intolerable pain the book had been written—month after month it had been a day and night race between the soldier and death—the grave was in sight, now, but the soldier who had never lost a fight had won. He had won, but he had to ask his question with his pencil, for the voice had fallen silent which had said so many inspiring things when the clouds hung low upon the spirits of his countrymen, and the voice which had never failed in its uplifting office since the day that it first made itself heard in the country’s struggle for its life—that day that it dictated those words that revealed to this nation that there was a man risen up at the front, and that the day of vacillation and timidity and compromise was at an end in at least one of the country’s thousand camps—“the only terms are—unconditional surrender.”
[PICTURE OF GRANT SITTING IN HIS WRAPS. GET IT FROM THE ENGRAVING IN THE “CENTURY.”] HOUSE RISE.
MUSIC.
But we do not need to lament for him. He did his mighty work, he died his noble death, and his name will live forever.
[PICTURE OF TOMB.]
I could answer his question without guessing. I already knew. I told him that his profit upon the orders already sent in by the General Agents and secured by safe bonds, would be $320,000. He was satisfied. As it turned out, his share of the profits was far and away beyond that. My firm’s cash profit was $130,000; but by tact, perseverance, watchfulness and sagacity in discovering the right opportunities during 18 careful months they managed to waste it all and get in debt. Eighteen months. As a financial achievement, by people entirely unacquainted with finance, it does not need to hang its head in the presence of anything of the kind that has happened in the American history of that great science.
By continued caution, tact, watchfulness and inspired financiering, during the next 7 years, the firm was able to retire from business in debt—if my wife and I may be counted in with the other creditors—in debt $208,000 above the assets. However, my wife and I don’t have to be paid, so that reduces the debt a good deal more than half. Nothing has to be paid but the rest of the debt; and here I stand, nobly paying it—out of your pockets. That is the way with debts; they just dump along, from shoulder to shoulder, and you never know who has got to foot the bill at last.
It was being whispered around that Satan was in Vienna incognito, and the thought came into my mind that it would be a great happiness to me if I could have the privilege of interviewing him.
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