There is no doubt though that Twain had a particular fondness for Ulysses S. Grant. They were on opposite sides during the Civil War (at least initially) but Twain came to see a goodness in Grant that bordered on brotherly love as the ex-President, dying of cancer, struggled to finish his memoirs. The memoirs-published by Twain-were a huge success with Grant’s wife eventually receiving royalties of close to $500,000.
I think the most interesting personality I ever encountered was General Grant. How and where he was so much larger than other men I had ever met I cannot describe. It was the same sort of feeling, I suppose that made my friend, Thomas Starr King, whilst listening
to a celebrated preacher, turn to me and exclaim, “Whereabouts in that figure does that imperial power reside.” You had that feeling with Grant exactly.
—Mark Twain Interview: Sydney
Morning Herald, 1895
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[W]hen we think of General Grant our pulses quicken and his grammar vanishes; we only remember that this is the simple soldier, who, all untaught of the silken phrase-makers, linked words together with an art surpassing the art of the schools, and put into them a something which will still bring to American ears, as long as America shall last, the roll of his vanished drums and the tread of his marching hosts.
“When I say I’ll learn (‘Teach’ is not in the river vocabulary) a man the river, I mean it. And you can depend on it, I’ll learn him or kill him.” Life on the Mississippi – Mark Twain
Utilizing a unique and memorable MARK TWAIN acronym, author Conor Cunneen demonstrates what the Dean of American Humorists learned him bout public speakin !