The Autobiography of Mark Twain Mark Twain (best beach reads .TXT) 📖

which I had with my father-in-law when I was arranging a contract with my publisher for Roughing It, my second book. I told him the publisher had arrived from Hartford, and would come to the house in the afternoon to discuss the contract and complete it with the signatures. I said I was going to require half the profits over the essential costs of manufacture. He asked if that arrangement would be perfectly fair to both parties, and said it was neither good business nor good morals to make contracts which gave to one side the advantage. I said that the terms which I was proposing were fair to both parties. Then Mr. Langdon after a musing silence said, with something like a reminiscent sorrow in his tone, “When you and the publisher shall have gotten the contract framed to suit you both and no doubts about it are left in your minds, sign it⁠—sign it: today, don’t wait till tomorrow.”

It transpired that he had acquired this wisdom, which he was giving me gratis, at considerable expense. He had acquired it twenty years earlier, or thereabouts, at the Astor House in New York, where he and a dozen other rising and able business men were gathered together to secure a certain railroad which promised to be a good property by and by, if properly developed and wisely managed. This was the Lehigh Valley Railroad. There were a number of conflicting interests to be reconciled before the deal could be consummated. The men labored over these things the whole afternoon, in a private parlor of that hotel. They dined, then reassembled and continued their labors until after two in the morning. Then they shook hands all around in great joy and enthusiasm, for they had achieved success and had drawn a contract in the rough which was ready for the signatures. The signing was about to begin; one of the men sat at the table with his pen poised over the fateful document, when somebody said: “Oh, we are tired to death. There is no use in continuing this torture any longer. Everything’s satisfactory. Let’s sign in the morning.” All assented, and that pen was laid aside.

Mr. Langdon said: “We got five or ten minutes’ additional sleep that night by that postponement, but it cost us several millions apiece, and it was a fancy price to pay. If we had paid out of our existing means, and the price had been a single million apiece, we should have had to sit up, for there wasn’t a man among us who could have met the obligation completely. The contract was never signed. We had traded a Bank of England for ten minutes’ extra sleep⁠—a very small sleep, an apparently unimportant sleep, but it has kept us tired ever since. When you’ve got your contract right, this afternoon, sign it.”

I followed that advice. It was thirty-five years ago, but it has kept me tired ever since.

New York, Thursday, February 22, 1906

Susy’s remarks about her grandfather Langdon⁠—Mr. Clemens tells about Mr. Atwater, Mr. David Gray, and about meeting David Gray, Jr., at a dinner recently.

I have wandered far from Susy’s chat about her grandfather, but that is no matter. In this autobiography it is my purpose to wander whenever I please and come back when I get ready. I have now come back, and we will set down what Susy has to say about her grandfather.

From Susy’s Biography

I mentioned that mamma and papa couldn’t stay in their house in Buffalo because it reminded them so much of grandpapa. Mamma received a letter from Aunt Susy in which Aunt Susy says a good deal about grandpapa, and the letter showed so clearly how much everyone that knew grandpapa loved and respected him, that mamma let me take it to copy what is in it about grandpapa, and mamma thought it would fit in nicely here.

Quarry Farm, April 16, ’85

Livy dear, are you not reminded by today’s report of General Grant of father? You remember how as Judge Smith and others whom father had chosen as executors were going out of the room, he said “Gentlemen I shall live to bury you all”⁠—smiled, and was cheerful. At that time he had far less strength than General Grant seems to have, but that same wonderful courage to battle with the foe. All along there has been much to remind me of father⁠—of his quiet patience⁠—in General Grant. There certainly is a marked likeness in the souls of the two men. Watching, day by day, the reports from the Nation’s sick room brings to mind so vividly the days of that summer of 1870. And yet they seem so far away. I seemed as a child, compared with now, both in years and experience. The best and the hardest of life have been since then to me, and I know this is so in your life. All before seems dreamy. I sepose this was because our lives had to be all readjusted to go on without that great power in them. Father was quietly such a power in so many lives beside ours, Livy dear⁠—not in kind or degree the same to any one but oh, a power!

The evening of the last company, I was so struck with the fact that Mr. Atwater stood quietly before father’s portrait a long time and turning to me said, “We shall never see his like again,” with a tremble and a choking in his voice⁠—this after fifteen years, and from a business friend. And some stranger, a week ago, spoke of his habit of giving, as so remarkable, he having heard of father’s generosity.⁠ ⁠…

I remember Mr. Atwater very well. There was nothing citified about him or his ways. He was in middle age, and had lived in the country all his life. He had the farmer look, the farmer gait; he wore the farmer clothes, and also the farmer goatee, a decoration which had been universal when I was a boy. But was