But I am wandering far from Susy’s Biography. I remember that I was about to explain a remark which I had been making about Susy’s grandfather Langdon having just barely escaped once the good luck—or the bad luck—of becoming a great railway magnate. The incident has interest for me for more than one reason. Its details came to my knowledge in a chance way in a conversation which I had with my father-in-law when I was arranging a contract with my publisher for Roughing It, my second book. I told him the publisher had arrived from Hartford, and would come to the house in the afternoon to discuss the contract and complete it with the signatures. I said I was going to require half the profits over the essential costs of manufacture. He asked if that arrangement would be perfectly fair to both parties, and said it was neither good business nor good morals to make contracts which gave to one side the advantage. I said that the terms which I was proposing were fair to both parties. Then Mr. Langdon after a musing silence said, with something like a reminiscent sorrow in his tone, “When you and the publisher shall have gotten the contract framed to suit you both and no doubts about it are left in your minds, sign it—sign it: today, don’t wait till tomorrow.”
It transpired that he had acquired this wisdom, which he was giving me gratis, at considerable expense. He had acquired it twenty years earlier, or thereabouts, at the Astor House in New York, where he and a dozen other rising and able business men were gathered together to secure a certain railroad which promised to be a good property by and by, if properly developed and wisely managed. This was the Lehigh Valley Railroad. There were a number of conflicting interests to be reconciled before the deal could be consummated. The men labored over these things the whole afternoon, in a private parlor of that hotel. They dined, then reassembled and continued their labors until after two in the morning. Then they shook hands all around in great joy and enthusiasm, for they had achieved success and had drawn a contract in the rough which was ready for the signatures. The signing was about to begin; one of the men sat at the table with his pen poised over the fateful document, when somebody said: “Oh, we are tired to death. There is no use in continuing this torture any longer. Everything’s satisfactory. Let’s sign in the morning.” All assented, and that pen was laid aside.
Mr. Langdon said: “We got five or ten minutes’ additional sleep that night by that postponement, but it cost us several millions apiece, and it was a fancy price to pay. If we had paid out of our existing means, and the price had been a single million apiece, we should have had to sit up, for there wasn’t a man among us who could have met the obligation completely. The contract was never signed. We had traded a Bank of England for ten minutes’ extra sleep—a very small sleep, an apparently unimportant sleep, but it has kept us tired ever since. When you’ve got your contract right, this afternoon, sign it.”
I followed that advice. It was thirty-five years ago, but it has kept me tired ever since.