a royalty of more than four hundred thousand dollars to Grant's widow
--the largest royalty ever paid from any single publication. It saved
the Grant family from poverty. Yet even this triumph was a misfortune
to Mark Twain, for it led to scores of less profitable book ventures and
eventual disaster.

Meanwhile he had written and published a number of books. Tom Sawyer,
The Prince and the Pauper, Life on the Mississippi, Huckleberry Finn, and
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court were among the volumes that
had entertained the world and inspired it with admiration and love for
their author. In 1878-79 he had taken his family to Europe, where they
spent their time in traveling over the Continent. It was during this
period that he was joined by his intimate friend, the Rev. Joseph H.
Twichell, of Hartford, and the two made a journey, the story of which is
told in A Tramp Abroad.

In 1891 the Hartford house was again closed, this time indefinitely,
and the family, now five in number, took up residence in Berlin. The
typesetting-machine and the unfortunate publishing venture were drawing
heavily on the family finances at this period, and the cost of the
Hartford establishment was too great to be maintained. During the next
three years he was distracted by the financial struggle which ended in
April, 1894, with the failure of Charles L. Webster & Co. Mark Twain now
found himself bankrupt, and nearly one hundred thousand dollars in debt.
It had been a losing fight, with this bitter ending always in view;
yet during this period of hard, hopeless effort he had written a large
portion of the book which of all his works will perhaps survive the
longest--his tender and beautiful story of Joan of Arc. All his life
Joan had been his favorite character in the world's history, and during
those trying months and years of the early nineties--in Berlin, in