It`s a good question. It`s two friendships, but there have been other friendships in the 19th century, but this is a particularly interesting one, a...

Twenty years ago, I was editing a newspaper here in Washington called "City Paper," and it was the 100th anniversary of the writing of "Huckleberry...

Well, I`ve always been interested in 19th century American history. It seems to me to be the formative period in our history, especially focusing on...

Yes. It`s really from Edmund Wilson. I owe Edmund Wilson a lot, I think our greatest literary critic and commentator on American nonfiction, who said...

Yes. It was prior to Grant`s becoming president but after the Civil War, and it was at a reception. And they were standing together. They were introduced....

He died July, 1885, just after finishing his memoirs, just two weeks after finishing his memoirs, in northern New York state. And the country knew that...

Early 1900s, in fact, the night of Haley`s comet in America, a generation -- two generations later. But the important thing, I think, about the rest...

It`s a story -- it`s a story of -- the first chapter is the story of his family and his growing up in Ohio and his education. There are one or two chapters...

"Huckleberry Finn," I think as most Americans know, is a story of a young boy, Huck, and a runaway slave, Jim, and their journey to freedom. But there`s...

Yes.

This is -- John T. Lewis is a helper servant in Elmira, New York, and a very close friend of Twain`s, and the pattern for Jim, the model for Jim. Twain...

Money.

Yes. They`re similar in that respect. Here are two men of two different generations, and it seems odd to us now, in their time, the Gilded Age, the...

Well, there was one on I Street in Washington. There was one in Philadelphia. There was one in Galena, Illinois. There are probably more, at least four...

It was a subscription from a group of friends, they raised thousands and thousands of dollars. It was a beautiful home, three floors. He sat in the...

He was a -- he was a complex character. Grant is one of the great enigmas, I think, of American history. A lot of historians -- there have been more...

He finished his memoir two weeks before he died at Mount McGregor in New York, where he had been taken on advice of his doctors for his last days, to...

It`s in northern New York. It`s north of -- just north of Saratoga Springs in upstate New York. Beautiful.

Oh, yes.

Yes.

This was the house of a businessman in New York who had put together a syndicate of owners who bought out the original farmstead of a McGregor, who...

Yes.

Well, it`s not clear, but it`s over $400,000. The original check that Twain gave Julia was $250,000, and there was another $200,000 after that. And...

Yes. An extraordinary amount of money.

The book came out in subscription. And it was two volumes. I`m not sure how many it sold, 60,000, 70,000 -- an incredible number for that time, a best-seller...

Yes.

As Twain would say, you never make any money selling in the trade -- that is, selling to a publisher and he puts it in a book store. And he had terrible,...

Yes, that`s right.

Oh, the percentages were much better. You know, then it was -- it wasn`t cheap to publish and print a book, but it was -- compared to the cost it is...

Yes. You can get it almost in any book store. I was in one of our chain book stores yesterday, and there were the memoirs. And there was "Huck Finn."...

Well, it`s -- we call it -- then, moreso than now, it was the great artery of American commerce and industry. It was the real backbone that -- the engineer...

Well, he was born in -- he was born in Hannibal, Missouri. He was born in Florida, Missouri, and then moved to Hannibal, Missouri. His father was a...

Yes.

He changed his name when he became a pilot. He changed his name after he became a pilot -- when he became a writer and he had to write -- he thought...

He got the name from the call of the watchman on the steamboat that would yell out the depth of where the steamboat was. And "mark twain" was -- I can`t...

A generation, 15 to 19 years, and 19 in age.

Oh, Grant was older, the older generation that commanded the war. Twain was of the generation that fought the war on the front lines.

Hardscrabble was -- Grant left the Army under really controversial circumstances. He was away from his wife, whom he just -- Julia, whom he adored....

Everywhere. Hartford, where Twain lived...

Still has the big house. Beautiful. You get a real sense of Twain when you walk in the door of his Hartford home. He built it the way he wanted to,...

He had nurses for his children. He had tutors for his children. He had cooks for his wife. He had a manservant for himself. He spent an enormous amount...

William D. Howells was the editor of "The Atlantic Monthly" magazine and probably the leading arbiter of literary taste.

He did. He bought his fiction. He bought his essays. He was a very good friend. Here was the one -- William Dean Howells was really an extraordinary...

Harriet Beecher Stowe and one of her sisters. Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of "Uncle Tom`s Cabin," was an icon in American literature. "Uncle Tom`s...

They did.

Harriet Beecher Stowe was then becoming elderly, and a little crotchety and strange in her old age. She would invade the Twains` backyard and rip out...

Oh, let`s see. Hartford, Elmira, New York, just for a day, and Hannibal, and Galena. The one place that I`ve always wanted to see, because I had featured...

Where Garfield died. Where the Grimkés lived for quite sometime.

I did. It was called "Lift up Thy Voice," came out several years ago.

Grimkés were two sisters -- the Grimkés were a South Carolina family, in which there were two sisters, Sarah and Angelina, who had seen slavery up...

"Lift up Thy Voice."

Four years ago. Three years ago.

1999.

66th Street house is gone. The I Street house is not here, either. And both cities have changed substantially. There is a -- there is a monument, a...

Actually, it was a relatively short period of time -- two years for the extraordinary amount of work that it was and the thousands of words in it. And...

Oh, it was the summer in Long Branch, in 1884, and he was eating a peach. And he was cutting it up at the table. And Julia was nearby -- his wife was...

Dr. John Douglas, a really interesting character, and a very compassionate and good man -- a person who stayed by his side. And Dr. Shrady was there...

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

No. No, no. It was surprising to me, too. I remember an incident. I guess it was in Foote`s Civil War narrative of Grant walking from the White House...

Yes.

John Phillip Newman. The Reverend John Phillip Newman, a Methodist minister and very close to Julia, his wife. Julia was a very strong and devout, believing...

Dozens. At first, there were dozens. And then they strung a wire from across the street and they would assign a couple of pressmen down the block to...

He was going to get better, he was going to live, he was going to conquer cancer, that his belief in God was going to conquer cancer. Newman was heart-broken...

Pulls the rug out from under them is right.

Well, this was at Long Branch in 1884. Official senior editors of the "Century" magazine had been trying for some time to get Grant to write articles...

That`s right.

Because the book was so good.

Grant was always -- it`s very clear that Grant was worried about what Twain thought about the book, and Twain thought it was good, so he never said...

Compared it to Caesar`s "Commentaries," and I think rightly so.

I have read Caesar`s "Commentaries." And the similarities -- well, Caesar`s "Commentaries" are in Latin, of course, and this is in English. But there`s...

Very little. Very -- he mentions it. And -- but it`s mentioned in passing. This is really a book about Civil War battles.

There were millions lost.

Hundreds of millions. There were millions lost. There were banks, there was a bank that was bankrupted, the head of the bank was in cahoots with Ferdinand...

Yes.

That`s right.

He was the senator from Nevada and had made a lot of money, and a good deal of money. He was -- he lost his money. But what was really lost were the...

Well, it came out in the press. And there were real criticisms of Grant and what he knew and how he knew it, and whether he was part of it. He wasn`t....

Yes. I used to be the editor of "City Paper."

"City Paper" -- I`m sorry -- "City Paper" is a weekly here in Washington. I edited it 20 years ago now. But -- and just starting out as a writer and...

I am from central Wisconsin, a very small town called Wisconsin Rapids in central Wisconsin.

I went to Boston University, and -- in the early `70s, and then to graduate school. I didn`t like graduate school. And my wife was a professor and dean...

About a year and a half, two years at the most.

I`ve been -- I was a freelance reporter for many years, wrote for "The Washington Post" and the "Daily News" in New York, "St. Louis Post-Dispatch."...

I`m also a political consultant. And this is how I make my living part of the time. And it`s good, because to make a living as a writer is a really...

For a firm in Washington, D.C. called Jefferson Waterman International, a great firm, and it`s a lot of fun, and it`s a real challenge. So, I come home...

We represent foreign countries and American corporations wanting to do business in foreign countries, or foreign corporations wanting to do business...

Quiet. Grant would rally and fade, and rally and fade, and had for months. His doctors thought his writing of his memoirs was keeping him alive.

He went to sleep sitting up in his chair. He couldn`t lie down for some reason. And it just hurt. It hurt to talk. At the end, he could just barely...

He was in Elmira, New York. And he wrote in his journals that he thought that Grant could probably -- he predicted that Grant could survive for another...

He didn`t. He stood in the window of his offices, near Union Square, and watched the parade. Odd to me that he didn`t go to the funeral. I don`t think...

Equivalent to what Julia made, it`s not very clear, it was $400,000 to $450,000. He wrote to William Dean Howells that he felt like Midas, that he could...

Bitter. He was absolutely enthralled with his daughter, Susie. She died. Enthralled with his wife, she died. He didn`t have as much money as he`d wanted....

Twain was outgoing, very critical of others. In many times of his life, and I say this with all due respect to him, he could be very nasty. He didn`t...

Grant.

Grant. Even though I admire Twain, I`d like -- I`d like to ask Grant whether the way that he fought the Civil War is the way that he intended to fight...

My pleasure..