His new quarters were on the second or third floor of a tall building which fronted on Union Square, a commercially aristocratic locality. His previous quarters had consisted of two good-sized rooms. His new onesⒶtextual note occupied the whole floor. What Webster really needed was a cubby-hole up a back street somewhere, with room to swing a cat inⒶtextual note—a long cat—Ⓐtextual notethis cubby-hole for office work. He needed no storage rooms, no cellars. The printers [begin page 65] and binders of the great Memoir took care of the sheets and the bound volumes for us,Ⓐtextual note and charged storage and insurance. Conspicuous quarters were not needed for that mighty book. You couldn’t have hidden General Grant’s publisher where the agent and the canvasser could not find him. The cubby-hole would have been sufficient for all our needs. Almost all the business would be transacted by correspondence. That correspondence would be with the sixteen general agents, none of it with their ten thousand canvassers.

However,Ⓐtextual note it was a very nice spread that we made,Ⓐtextual note as far as spaciousness and perspective went. These were impressive—that is, as impressive as nakedness long drawn out and plenty of it could be. It seemed to me that the look of the place was going to deceive country people and drive them away, and I suggested that we put up a protecting sign just inside the door: “Come in. It is not a rope walk.”

It was a mistake to deal in sarcasms with Webster. They cut deep into his vanity. He hadn’t a single intellectual weapon in his armory,Ⓐtextual note and could not fight back. It was unchivalrous in me to attack with mental weapons this mentally weaponless man, and I tried to refrain from it, but couldn’t. I ought to have been large enough to endure his vanities, but I wasn’t. I am not always large enough to endure my own. He had one defect which particularly exasperated me, because I didn’t have it myself. When a matter was mentioned of which he was ignorant, he not only would not protect himself by remarking that he was not acquainted with the matter, but he had not even discretion enough to keep his tongue still. He would say something intended to deceive the hearers into the notion that he knew something about that subject himself—a most unlikely condition, since his ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. Once in a drawing-room company some talk sprang up about George Evans and her literature. I saw Webster getting ready to contribute. There was no way to hit him with a brick or a Bible, or something, and reduce him to unconsciousness and save him, because it would have attracted attention—and therefore I waited for his mountain to bring forth its mouse, which it did as soon as there was a vacancy between speeches. He filled that vacancy with this remark, uttered with tranquil complacency:

“I’veⒶtextual note never read any of his books, on account of prejudice.”Ⓔexplanatory note

Before we had become fairly settled in the new quarters,Ⓐtextual note Webster had suggested that we abolish the existing contract and make a new one. Very well, it was done. I probably never read it nor asked anybody else to read it. I probably merely signed it and saved myself further bother in that way. Under the preceding contracts Webster had been my paid servant; under the new one I was his slave, his absolute slave, and without salary. I owned nine-tenths of the business; I furnished all the capital; I shouldered all the losses; I was responsible for everything—but Webster was sole master. This new condition and my sarcasms changed the atmosphere. I could no longer give orders,Ⓐtextual note as before. I could not even make a suggestionⒺexplanatory note with any considerable likelihood of its acceptance.

General Grant was a sick man, but he wrought upon his MemoirsⒶtextual note like a well one, and made steady and sure progress.

Webster throned himself in the rope walk and issued a summons to the sixteen general agents to come from the sixteen quarters of the United States and sign contracts. [begin page 66] They came. They assembled. Webster delivered the law to them as from MountⒶtextual note Sinai. They kept their temper wonderfully, marvelously. They furnished the bonds required. They signed the contracts, and departed. Ordinarily they would have resented the young man’s arrogances, but this was not an ordinary case. The contracts were worth to each general agent a good many thousands of dollars. They knew this, and the knowledge helped them to keep down their animosities.

Whitford was on hand. He was always at Webster’s elbow. Webster was afraid to do anything without legal advice. He could have all the legal advice he wanted, because he had now hired Whitford by the year. He was paying him ten thousand dollars a year out of my pocket. And indeed Whitford was worth part of it—the two-hundredth part of it. It was the first time he had ever earned anything worth speaking of, and he was content. The phrase “worth speaking of” is surplusage. Whitford had never earned anything. Whitford was never destined to earn anything. He did not earn the ten thousand dollars nor any part of it. In two instances his services proved a pecuniary damage to the firm. His other services were inconsequential and unnecessary. The bookkeeperⒶtextual note could have performed them.

“General, this is a warning to the rest of us.”

He shook his head, and Douglas said,

“No,Ⓐtextual note it isn’t a warning to anybody. This is not a result of smoking. Smoking has never hurt General Grant,Ⓐtextual note and it will never hurt you. No one knows how long this cancer poison has been lurking in General Grant’s system—many and many a year, perhaps. All it needed at any time was a sufficient opportunity to develop itself,Ⓐtextual note and the development would ensue. Without such sufficient opportunity he could live to a hundred,Ⓐtextual note and die unaware that there was such a thing as cancer poison in him.”

The thing that furnished the opportunity was the shame and humiliation and mental misery inflicted upon General Grant by the robberies committed upon confiding clients by Fish and Ward of the firm of Grant and Ward. It was the unimpeachable credit and respectability of his name and character that enabled them to swindle the public. They could not have done it on their own reputations. It was General Grant’s mental miseries that gave the cancer poison its opportunity. It was not tobacco.

At that time, and for some time afterward, General Grant was able to use his voice, and he now began to tell me some of Ward’s performances. It was plain that he thought he ought to be ashamed of having been gulled and deceived by such a man as Ward, and wanted to find a justification or palliation for the confidence which he had misplaced in [begin page 67] Ward. It was most pathetic to hear this old lion,Ⓐtextual note who had been brought so low by a hyena,Ⓐtextual note trying to explain why it was natural thatⒶtextual note he should trust a hyena, he being innocentlyⒶtextual note ignorant of the ways of that kind of an animal. He said, in substance:Ⓐtextual note

“You would have done as I did, Clemens. He would have deceived you as easily as he deceived me. He would have deceived anybody who was ignorant of the intricacies of finance and commercial ways and methods. Indeed he would have deceived men that were acquainted with those intricacies and those methods, and he did it. The proof is in the testimony given before the courts. It is in the testimonyⒶtextual note of at least one such man which was never given in court at all. That man was so ashamed of having been duped by such a poor creature as Ward that he suffered a loss of three hundred thousand dollars,Ⓐtextual note out of which sum Ward had swindled him—suffered the loss and kept still, and avoided the witness box. Now then, when such a man as that could be deceived by Ward, is it to be wondered at that he was able to deceive me? Now consider Ward’s ways,Ⓐtextual note and see how ingeniously deceptive they were. Let me go into particulars for a moment. He used to sit there in his private office and accept investments from people, waste that money, throw it away, lose it—and when a statement was due the investor,Ⓐtextual note furnish it promptly, and along with it a handsome profit on the investment, the investment and the profit and everything connected with it being drawn from some other investor who had just been in and left his money to be speculated with. I will give you an instance. When our firm was at the very top wave of prodigal prosperity, as I supposed, and as everybody supposed (whereasⒶtextual note it was not making a cent, but was losing money) one of the very sharpest and most successful brokers in this town bustled into our office one day and said,

“ ‘Ward,Ⓐtextual note I am just taking the steamer for Europe and back to get a breath of fresh air. Here’s ten thousand dollars. Do you think you can do anything with it in so short a time?’Ⓐtextual note

“WardⒶtextual note said nonchalantly, ‘Oh,Ⓐtextual note perhaps. If you want to leave it I’ll see what we can do.’

“TheⒶtextual note man left his check and bustled out again. Ward used that check to pay some customer a dividend on an investment that hadn’t earned a penny. Thirty days later that broker bustled in again and said,

“ ‘Well,Ⓐtextual note anything happened?’

“WardⒶtextual note said, asⒶtextual note nonchalantly as ever,

“ ‘Well,Ⓐtextual note not much, but something’—carelessly drew a check and handed it to the man.

“TheⒶtextual note man said,Ⓐtextual note ‘Good gracious! A hundred per centⒶtextual note profit in thirty days!’ He handed the check back to Ward and said ‘That’s a good enough hen for me. Set her again.’ ”

General Grant said that Ward’s depredations upon him and upon the Grant relationship were exhaustively complete. He said,

“IⒶtextual note had laid up four hundred thousand dollars. Ward got it all. He questioned me about the outlying kin, and wherever he found a member of it that had saved up something in a stocking he sent for it and got it. In one case, a poor old female relative of mine had scrimped and saved until she had something like aⒶtextual note thousand dollars laid up for the rainy day of old age. Ward took it without a pang.”