No chapter in Mark Twain’s life gave more basis for the great
love of his countrymen than that of his unsuccessful business
affairs, his simple, uncomplaining facing of them, and his
honest fulfilling of his debts to the last farthing. Coming
upon him when sixty years of age, and with disheartening
completeness, the failure of his publishing firm might well
have bowed down a stronger man; and there can be no doubt but
that his cheerful humor saved him, in bearing up under the
disappointment, as it enabled him to pay his obligations in a
financial way.
The firm of C. L. Webster & Co. was organized in 1884, and Mark
Twain became president and chief stockholder. As head of the
concern his essentially literary and unbusinesslike leanings led
him to oversee only the broadest lines of the publishing policy,
leaving the administrative details to other hands. Owing to the
character of some of the works which the company put out, its
ventures were more than ordinarily large; the memoirs of Gen.
Grant netted between $250,000 and $300,000 in royalties alone to
the general’s widow.
On April 14, 1894, after several reverses, the firm made an
assignment for the benefit of its creditors. Mark Twain had
already put in more than $65,000 of his own money in an attempt
to save the company; he had also lost heavily in trying to
develop a type-setting machine. Liquidation showed liabilities
of $96,000. Sixty years old, with a wife and three daughters to
provide for, Mark Twain voluntarily gave up all his personal
assets as a partial satisfaction of his debts and accepted the
burden of those remaining. He said, splendidly:
“The law recognizes no mortgage on a man’s brain, and a
merchant who has given up his all may take advantage of the
law of insolvency, and start free again for himself; but I am
not a business man, and honor is a harder master than the law.
It can not compromise for less than one hundred cents on the
dollar.”--New York _Evening Post_.
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