The royalty statement would not be ready when Clemens visited Hartford (see the next note), but was sent to him at Fenwick Hall on 5 August. It showed sales of 28,611 copies of Roughing It for the second quarter (May through July), and 3, 431 of The Innocents Abroad (for April through July), for total royalties of $8, 485.17, of which $5,000 had already been disbursed to Clemens on 24 June (OC to SLC, 2 Aug 72, CU-MARK; Bliss to SLC, 5 Aug 72, CU-MARK; check dated 24 June 72, signed by F. E. Bliss, CtHMTH; receipt dated 24 June 72, signed by SLC, CtY-BR).

Clemens relayed a request from Harte’s most recent letter, postmarked 25 July. Harte also mentioned receiving two letters, now lost, in which Clemens had evidently continued his efforts (still with little success) to arrange for Bliss to publish a book by Harte (CU-MARK):

Bliss replied to Clemens on 31 July, saying in part:

Mount Holyoke and Mount Tom, overlooking the Connecticut River, were in a popular summer resort area of Massachusetts about thirty miles north of Hartford. Mount Washington is a peak in the White Mountains in northern New Hampshire. It is not known whether Bliss and Harte saw each other before 8 September, when they met in New York and signed a contract in which Harte agreed to deliver, and Bliss to publish, “the manuscript for a book, upon a subject to be agreed upon by the parties hereto, ... as soon as practicable, but as soon as the 1st day of January next.” Bliss agreed to an advance of $1,000 on a royalty of 7½ percent, half of which he paid to Harte on 8 September, and the other half on 19 September. Harte was slow to meet his side of the bargain, taking several years to produce the manuscript for Gabriel Conroy, his only full-length novel. Clemens recalled in 1907 that

Gabriel Conroy was issued by the American Publishing Company in September 1876, and by November 1878 had sold only 3,332 copies (American Publishing Company contract, CLU-SC, information courtesy of Gary Scharnhorst; Duckett, 102–3, 109; APC, 90; Charles E. Perkins to Anna E. Dickinson, 26 June 74, Anna E. Dickinson Papers, DLC; Appletons’ Hand-Book, 97–98). Harte would remind Clemens more than once that his contract with Bliss had benefited Clemens himself. On 24 December 1875 Harte wrote him, “Do you remember that some years ago when Bliss wanted a book from me for his House, you told him you would use your influence provided he did the decent and honorable thing to you in some contested point of business?” (CU-MARK, in Duckett, 97). And on 1 March 1877 he wrote, “You afterwards admitted to me that a disputed question of one or two thousand dollars was settled in your favor by virtue of that contract so made” (CU-MARK, in Duckett, 135). Since Clemens’s efforts to use his influence with Harte occurred between June and August 1872, it is likely that the “contested point of business” was the royalty dispute over Roughing It, and that the benefit Clemens derived was at least in part Bliss’s agreement to pay a 10 percent rather than a 7½ percent royalty on his next book, as stipulated in the contract Clemens and Bliss signed on 22 June. Harte’s reference to “one or two thousand dollars” has not been explained, but that amount might have been the difference between half profits and 7½ percent on some portion of the sale of Roughing It (11 June 72 to Sutro, n. 1click to open link; 20 Mar 72 to Bliss draft, n. 2click to open link; 8 May 72 to Perkins, n. 2click to open link)

“The American Publishing Company has declared a quarterly dividend of twenty per cent” (“Brief Mention,” Hartford Courant, 17 July 72, 2; see 4 Mar 73 to Bliss, n. 4click to open link).