n the river had revived
it. The interest in the game became quiescent, and he set to work to
finish the story at a dead heat.

To Howells, August 22 (1883), he wrote:

I have written eight or nine hundred manuscript pages in such a
brief space of time that I mustn't name the number of days; I
shouldn't believe it myself, and of course couldn't expect you to.
I used to restrict myself to four and five hours a day and five days
in the week, but this time I have wrought from breakfast till 5.15
P.M. six days in the week, and once or twice I smouched a Sunday
when the boss wasn't looking. Nothing is half so good as literature
hooked on Sunday, on the sly.

He refers to the game, though rather indifferently.

When I wrote you I thought I had it; whereas I was merely entering
upon the initiatory difficulties of it. I might have known it
wouldn't be an easy job or somebody would have invented a decent
historical game long ago--a thing which nobody has done.

Notwithstanding the fact that he was working at Huck with enthusiasm, he
seems to have been in no hurry to revise it for publication, either as a
serial or as a book. But the fact that he persevered until Huck Finn
at last found complete utterance was of itself a sufficient matter for
congratulation.

CXLV. HOWELLS AND CLEMENS WRITE A PLAY

Before Howells went abroad Clemens had written:

Now I think that the play for you to write would be one entitled,
"Colonel Mulberry Sellers in Age" (75), with Lafayette Hawkins (at
50) still sticking to him and believing in him and calling him "My
lord." He [Sellers] is a specialist and a scientist in various
ways. Your refined people and purity of speech would make the best
possible background, and when you are done, I could take your
manuscript and rewrite the Colonel's speeches, and make him properly
extravagant, and I would let the play go to Raymond, and bind him up
with a contract that would give him the bellyache every time he read
it. Shall we think this over, or drop it as being nonsense?

Howells, returned and settled in Boston once more, had revived an
interest in the play idea. He corresponded with Clemens concerning it
and agreed that the American Claimant, Leathers, should furnish the
initial impulse of the drama.

They decided to revive Colonel Sellers and make him the heir; Colonel
Sellers in old age, more wildly ex