Chapters from My Autobiography | Page 7

during the lapsed twenty-one years I had in fancy taken
his life several times every year, and always in new and increasingly
cruel and inhuman ways, but that now I was pacified, appeased, happy,
even jubilant; and that thenceforth I should hold him my true and
valued friend and never kill him again.
I reported my adventure to Webb, and he bravely said that not all the
Carletons in the universe should defeat that book; he would publish it
himself on a ten per cent. royalty. And so he did. He brought it out in
blue and gold, and made a very pretty little book of it, I think he named
it "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, and Other
Sketches," price $1.25. He made the plates and printed and bound the
book through a job-printing house, and published it through the
American News Company.
In June I sailed in the Quaker City Excursion. I returned in November,
and in Washington found a letter from Elisha Bliss, of the American
Publishing Company of Hartford, offering me five per cent. royalty on
a book which should recount the adventures of the Excursion. In lieu of
the royalty, I was offered the alternative of ten thousand dollars cash
upon delivery of the manuscript. I consulted A. D. Richardson and he
said "take the royalty." I followed his advice and closed with Bliss. By
my contract I was to deliver the manuscript in July of 1868. I wrote the
book in San Francisco and delivered the manuscript within contract
time. Bliss provided a multitude of illustrations for the book, and then
stopped work on it. The contract date for the issue went by, and there
was no explanation of this. Time drifted along and still there was no
explanation. I was lecturing all over the country; and about thirty times
a day, on an average, I was trying to answer this conundrum:
"When is your book coming out?"
I got tired of inventing new answers to that question, and by and by I
got horribly tired of the question itself. Whoever asked it became my
enemy at once, and I was usually almost eager to make that appear.

As soon as I was free of the lecture-field I hastened to Hartford to make
inquiries. Bliss said that the fault was not his; that he wanted to publish
the book but the directors of his Company were staid old fossils and
were afraid of it. They had examined the book, and the majority of
them were of the opinion that there were places in it of a humorous
character. Bliss said the house had never published a book that had a
suspicion like that attaching to it, and that the directors were afraid that
a departure of this kind would seriously injure the house's reputation;
that he was tied hand and foot, and was not permitted to carry out his
contract. One of the directors, a Mr. Drake--at least he was the remains
of what had once been a Mr. Drake--invited me to take a ride with him
in his buggy, and I went along. He was a pathetic old relic, and his
ways and his talk were also pathetic. He had a delicate purpose in view
and it took him some time to hearten himself sufficiently to carry it out,
but at last he accomplished it. He explained the house's difficulty and
distress, as Bliss had already explained it. Then he frankly threw
himself and the house upon my mercy and begged me to take away
"The Innocents Abroad" and release the concern from the contract. I
said I wouldn't--and so ended the interview and the buggy excursion.
Then I warned Bliss that he must get to work or I should make trouble.
He acted upon the warning, and set up the book and I read the proofs.
Then there was another long wait and no explanation. At last toward
the end of July (1869, I think), I lost patience and telegraphed Bliss that
if the book was not on sale in twenty-four hours I should bring suit for
damages.
That ended the trouble. Half a dozen copies were bound and placed on
sale within the required time. Then the canvassing began, and went
briskly forward. In nine months the book took the publishing house out
of debt, advanced its stock from twenty-five to two hundred, and left
seventy thousand dollars profit to the good. It was Bliss that told me
this--but if it was true, it was the first time that he had told the truth in
sixty-five years. He was born in 1804.
III.
... This was in 1849. I was fourteen years old, then. We were still living

in Hannibal, Missouri, on the banks of the Mississippi, in the new
"frame"