Private.
Sunday Oct 24./80
My Dear Bro:
Bliss is dead. The aspect of the balance-sheet is enlightening. It reveals the fact, through my present contract, (which is for half the profits on the book above actual cost of paper, printing & binding,) that if Perkins had listened to my urgings & sued the company for ½ profits on “Roughing It,” at the time you cipherded on cost of Innocents, Bliss would have backed down & would not have allowed the case [MS page 2] to go into court. I felt sure of that, at the time, but Perkins was loath to go for a man w with no better weapon to use than a “scare”—& Bliss went into the accounts & details & satisfied Perkins & his expert that 7½ per cent did represent half profits up to a sale of 50,000, & that after that the publisher had a mere trifling advantage of the author. So we dropped the matter.
I did a lot of ciphering, & struck for 10 per cent on the next book. Bliss stood [MS page 3] the raise, but “proved” that paper was so much higher that 10 represented more than half profits.
I never bothered about the next 2 books—I cared nothing about them; being busy cursing from $1 $500 to $1200 a week out of Raymond; but this time, the play being long ago dead, I did take an interest. I told the directors I wouldn’t publish with them at any figure, because their business [MS page 4] was too much spread out; Bliss had resigned; so I gave him the contract, at ½ profits. Then he was ashamed to leave the company to perish; so he asked my permission to transfer the book to them; & I said I was more than willing, since they would be obliged to publish only my book during the first 9 months. Well, as a consideration for the book, he required them to allow him one-half of the [MS page 5] company’s entire profits for 3 years!—& they were exceedingly glad to comply. For it saved the company’s life & set them high on their pins & free of debt. Frank has taken his father’s place, & the business goes on.
Keep these things utterly private—mention them to nobody.
I have lost considerably by all this nonsense—sixty thousand dollars, I should say—& if Bliss were alive I would stay with the concern & [MS page 6] get it all back; for on each b new book I would require a portsion of that back pay; but as it is (this in the very strictest confidence), I shall probably go to a new publisher 6 or 8 months hence, for I am afraid Frank, with his poor health, will lack push & drive.
Out of the suspicions which you bred in me years ago, has grown this result—to-wit, that I shall within the twelve-month get ‸ $40,000 out of this “Tramp” instead of $20,000. Twenty thousand [MS page 7] dollars, after taxes & other expenses are stripped away, is worth to the investor about $75 a month—so I shall tell Mr. Perkins to make your check that amount per month, hereafter, while our income is able to afford it. This ends the loan business; & hereafter you can reflect that you are living not on borrowed money but on money which you have squarely earned, & which has no taint nor savor of charity about it—& you can also reflect that the money you have [MS page 8] been receiving of me all these years, is interest charged against the heavy bill which the next publisher will have to stand who gets a book of mine.
Jean got the stockings, & is much obliged; Mollie wants to know whom she most resembles, but I can’t tell; she has blue eyes & brown hair, & three chins, & is very fat & happy; & at one time or another she has resembled all the different Clemenses & Langdons, in turn, that have ever lived.
[MS page 9]Livy is too much beaten out with the baby, nights, to write, these times; & I don’t know of anything urgent to say, except that a basketful of letters has accumulated in the 7 days that I have been whooping & cursing over a cold in the head—& I must attack the pile this very minute.
With love from us
Ys Affly
Sam.
$25 enclosed.
[MS page 10] Mr. Orion Clemens | Keokuk | Iowa [return address:] return to s. l. clemens, hartford, conn., if not delivered within 10 days. [postmarked:] hartford conn oct 25 12m
