On his return to America, at San Francisco and Sacramento, thousands gathered to see him. At Chicago, he said, in addressing the Army of the Tennessee, "Let us be true to ourselves, avoid all bitterness and ill-feeling, either on the part of sections or parties toward each other, and we need have no fear in future of maintaining the stand we have taken among nations, so far as opposition from foreign nations goes." In Philadelphia, where he was royally entertained by his friend Mr. George W. Childs, he said to the Grand Army of the Republic, "What I want to impress upon you is that you have a country to be proud of, and a country to fight for, and a country to die for if need be.... In no other country is the young and energetic man given such a chance by industry and frugality to acquire a competence for himself and family as in America. Abroad it is difficult for the poor man to make his way at all. All that is necessary is to know this in order that we may become better citizens." On his return to New York, he was presented by his friends with a home in that city, and also with the gift of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. He was soon prevailed upon to enter a banking firm with Ferdinand Ward and James D. Fish. The bank failed, Grant found himself financially ruined, and the two partners were sent to prison. He was now to struggle again for a living, as in the early days in the Galena leather store. A timely offer came from the _Century_ magazine, to write his experiences in the Civil War. Very simply, so that an uneducated person could understand, Grant modestly and fairly described the great battles in which he was of necessity the central figure. Unused to literary labor, he bent himself to the task, working seven and eight hours a day. On October 22, 1884, cancer developed in the throat, and for nine months Grant fought with death, till the two great volumes of his memoirs could be completed and given to the world, that his family might not be left dependent. Early in June, 1885, as he was failing rapidly, he was taken to Mt. McGregor, near Saratoga, where a cottage had been offered him by Mr. Joseph W. Drexel. He worked now more heroically than ever, till the last page was written, with the words: "The war has made us a nation of great power and intelligence. We have but little to do to preserve peace, happiness, and prosperity at home, and the respect of other nations. Our experience ought to teach us the necessity of the first; our power secures the latter. "I feel that we are on the eve of a new era, when there is to be great harmony between the Federal and Confederate. I cannot stay to be a living witness to the correctness of this prophecy; but I feel it within me that it is to be so. The universally kind feeling expressed for me at a time when it was supposed that each day would prove my last seemed to me the beginning of the answer to 'Let us have peace.'"