'. Upon the whole I
have the notion that Clemens thought this his greatest book, and he was
supported in his opinion by that of the 'portier' in his hotel at Vienna,
and that of the German Emperor, who, as he told me with equal respect for
the preference of each, united in thinking it his best; with such
far-sundered social poles approaching in its favor, he apparently found
himself without standing for opposition. At any rate, the papers won
instant appreciation from his editor and publisher, and from the readers
of their periodical, which they expected to prosper beyond precedent in
its circulation. But those were days of simpler acceptance of the
popular rights of newspapers than these are, when magazines strictly
guard their vested interests against them. 'The New York Times' and the
'St. Louis Democrat' profited by the advance copies of the magazine sent
them to reprint the papers month by month. Together they covered nearly
the whole reading territory of the Union, and the terms of their daily
publication enabled them to anticipate the magazine in its own restricted
field. Its subscription list was not enlarged in the slightest measure,
and The Atlantic Monthly languished on the news-stands as undesired as
ever.

VI.

It was among my later visits to Hartford that we began to talk up the
notion of collaborating a play, but we did not arrive at any clear
intention, and it was a telegram out of the clear sky that one day
summoned me from Boston to help with a continuation of Colonel Sellers. I
had been a witness of the high joy of Clemens in the prodigious triumph
of the first Colonel Sellers, which had been dramatized from the novel of
'The Gilded Age.' This was the joint work of Clemens and Charles Dudley
Warner, and the story had been put upon the stage by some one in Utah,
whom Clemens first brought to book in the courts for violation of his
copyright, and then indemnified for such rights as his adaptation of the
book had given him. The structure of the play as John T. Raymond gave it
was substantially the work of this unknown dramatist. Clemens never
pretended, to me at any rate, that he had the least hand in it; he
frankly owned that he was incapable of dramatization; yet the vital part
was his, for the characters in the play were his as the book embodied
them, and the success which it won with the public was justly his. This
he shared equally with the actor, following the company with an agent,
who cou