promised that I would 'stake' him until he had the book written. I made
him a clerk to my committee in the senate, which paid him six dollars
per day; then I hired a man for one hundred dollars per month to do the
work!" His mischievously extravagant description of Mark Twain at this
time is eminently worthy of record "He was arrayed in a seedy suit which
hung upon his lean frame in bunches, with no style worth mentioning. A
sheaf of scraggly, black hair leaked out of a battered, old, slouch hat,
like stuffing from an ancient Colonial sofa, and an evil-smelling cigar
butt, very much frazzled, protruded from the corner of his mouth. He
had a very sinister appearance. He was a man I had known around the
Nevada mining camps several years before, and his name was Samuel L.
Clemens."

It was during this winter that Mark wrote a number of humorous articles
and sketches--'The Facts in the Case of the Great Beef Contract', the
account of his resignation as clerk of the Senate Committee on
Conchology, and 'Riley--Newspaper Correspondent'. His time was chiefly
devoted to preparing the material for his book; but finding Washington
too distracting, he returned to San Francisco and completed the
manuscript therein July, 1868. For a year the publication of the book
was delayed, as recorded in the Autobiography; but it finally appeared
in print following Mark's indignant telegram to Bliss that, if the book
was not on sale in twenty-four hours, he would bring suit for damages.
Mark Twain records that in nine months the book had taken the publishing
house out of debt, advanced its stock from twenty-five to two hundred,
and left seventy thousand dollars clear profit. Eighty-five thousand
copies were sold within sixteen months, the largest sale of a four
dollar book ever achieved in America in so short a time up to that date.
It is, miraculous to relate, still the leader in its own special field
--a "bestseller" for forty years!