From Mark Twain’s Notebook…..

…on April 1, 1885.

From Grant And Twain-The Story Of An American Friendship by Mark Perry comes the following.

Former President Ulysses Grant has cancer and though facing excruciating pain continues to write his memoirs so to leave a source of income for his family.  Meanwhile, Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn has been out for a number of months and Grant’s volumes will be handled through a publishing contract with the former riverboat captain.  By this time the two had been friends for years and formed a trusting relationship.

Reporters had been stationed at Grant’s home on a death watch in New York while in Hartford, Connecticut on the morning of April 1, 1885 Twain will write in his notebook these words….

Many a person between the two oceans lay hours awake listening for the booming of the fire bells that should speak to the nation simultaneously and tell its calamity. The bells’ strokes are to be 30 seconds apart and there will be sixty-two, the General’s age.  They will be stroking in every town of the United States at the same moment.

I found that passage so touching and it stood out from the other text concerning time slipping away for the beloved hero of the Civil War.

Grant will re-bound for a time in the days to follow but there were many emotional responses from the nation during that time, such as Twain penned.  The former president will live until the morning of July 23rd.

I bought this book when visiting Grant’s home in Galena, Illinois last year.   The tick of time as Grant’s health slips away, while knowing he needs to work and write with every hour left to him, is one of those stories that compels each reader to live days of meaning.

In the end, Grant leaves two volumes that remain to this day considered as the ‘finest nonfiction books written in America’.