ugh droppings from your conversation
to pay me five hundred per cent. profit in the way of the several
magazine articles which I could have written; whereas I can now
write only one or two, and am therefore largely out of pocket by
your proud ways.

Clemens would not fail to write about his trip. He could not help doing
that, and he began "Some Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion" as soon
as he landed in Hartford. They were quite what the name would
signify--leisurely, pleasant commentaries on a loafing, peaceful
vacation. They are not startling in their humor or description, but are
gently amusing and summery, reflecting, bubble-like, evanescent fancies
of Bermuda. Howells, shut up in a Boston editorial office, found them
delightful enough, and very likely his Atlantic readers agreed with him.
The story of "Isaac and the Prophets of Baal" was one that Capt. Ned
Wakeman had told to Twichell during a voyage which the latter had made
to Aspinwall with that vigorous old seafarer; so in the "Rambling Notes"
Wakeman appears as Captain Hurricane Jones, probably a step in the
evolution of the later name of Stormfield. The best feature of the
series (there were four papers in all) is a story of a rescue in
mid-ocean; but surely the brightest ripple of humor is the reference to
Bermuda's mahogany-tree:

There was exactly one mahogany-tree on the island. I know this to
be reliable because I saw a man who said he had counted it many a
time and could not be mistaken. He was a man with a haze lip and a
pure heart, and everybody said he was as true as steel. Such men
are all too few.

Clemens cared less for these papers than did Howells. He had serious
doubts about the first two and suggested their destruction, but with
Howells's appreciation his own confidence in them returned and he let
them all go in. They did not especially advance his reputation, but
perhaps they did it no harm.

CXII. A NEW PLAY AND A NEW TALE

He wrote a short story that year which is notable mainly for the fact
that in it the telephone becomes a literary property, probably for the
first time. "The Loves of Alonzo Fitz-Clarence and Rosannah Ethelton"
employed in the consummation what was then a prospect, rather than a
reality--long-distance communication.

His work that summer consisted mainly of two extensive undertakings, one
of which he completed without delay. He still had the dramatic ambition,
and he beli