No primeiro volume da monumental autobiografia de Mark Twain, que, segundo determinação do escritor, só poderia ser publicada cem anos após a sua morte, há um momento particularmente emocionante, aquele em que Karl Gerhardt, ainda um jovem artista, corrige o busto do General Grant na presença do seu modelo que se encontrava então às portas da morte, devido a um cancro na garganta.
Eis como Twain conclui o registo deste instante:
"To my mind this bust, completed at this sitting, has in it more of General Grant than can be found in any other likeness of him that has ever been made since he ws a famous man. I think it may be called the best portrait of General Grant that is in existence. It has also a feature which must always be a remembrancer to this notion of what the General was passing through the long weeks of that spring. For, into the clay imge went the pain whih he was enduring but which did not appear in his face when he was awake. Consequently, the bust has about it a suggestion of patient and brave and manly suffering which is infinitely touching."
Acrescente-se que Gerhardt havia já concebido o célebre busto de Mark Twain.
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