e the play. He first
offered it to several other actors, who eagerly caught it, only to give
it back with the despairing renunciation, "That is a Raymond play." We
tried managers with it, but their only question was whether they could
get Raymond to do it. In the mean time Raymond had provided himself with
a play for the winter--a very good play, by Demarest Lloyd; and he was in
no hurry for ours. Perhaps he did not really care for it perhaps he knew
when he heard of it that it must come to him in the end. In the end it
did, from my hand, for Clemens would not meet him. I found him in a mood
of sweet reasonableness, perhaps the more softened by one of those
lunches which our publisher, the hospitable James R. Osgood, was always
bringing people together over in Boston. He said that he could not do
the play that winter, but he was sure that he should like it, and he had
no doubt he would do it the next winter. So I gave him the manuscript,
in spite of Clemens's charges, for his suspicions and rancors were such
that he would not have had me leave it for a moment in the actor's hands.
But it seemed a conclusion that involved success and fortune for us. In
due time, but I do not remember how long after, Raymond declared himself
delighted with the piece; he entered into a satisfactory agreement for
it, and at the beginning of the next season he started with it to
Buffalo, where he was to give a first production. At Rochester he paused
long enough to return it, with the explanation that a friend had noted to
him the fact that Colonel Sellers in the play was a lunatic, and insanity
was so serious a thing that it could not be represented on the stage
without outraging the sensibilities of the audience; or words to that
effect. We were too far off to allege Hamlet to the contrary, or King
Lear, or to instance the delight which generations of readers throughout
the world had taken in the mad freaks of Don Quixote. Whatever were the
real reasons of Raymond for rejecting the play, we had to be content with
those he gave, and to set about getting it into other hands. In this
effort we failed even more signally than before, if that were possible.
At last a clever and charming elocutionist, who had long wished to get
himself on the stage, heard of it and asked to see it. We would have
shown it to any one by this time, and we very willingly showed it to him.
He came to Hartford and did some scenes from it for us. I must say he
did them ve