This generous bill of literary particulars was fully warranted. Mark
Twain's equipment was equal to his occasions. It is true that he was no
longer young, and that his health was not perfect, but his resolution
and his energy had not waned.

His need was imminent and he lost no time. He dug out from his
pigeonholes such materials as he had in stock, selecting a few completed
manuscripts for immediate disposal--among them his old article entitled,
"Mental Telegraphy," written in 1878, when he had hesitated to offer it,
in the fear that it would not be accepted by the public otherwise than
as a joke. He added to it now a supplement and sent it to Mr. Alden, of
Harper's Magazine.

Psychic interest had progressed in twelve years; also Mark Twain had
come to be rather more seriously regarded. The article was accepted
promptly!--[The publication of this article created a good deal of a
stir and resulted in the first general recognition of what later became
known as Telepathy. A good many readers insisted on regarding the whole
matter as one of Mark Twain's jokes, but its serious acceptance was
much wider.]--The old sketch, "Luck," also found its way to Harper's
Magazine, and other manuscripts were looked over and furbished up with a
view to their disposal. Even the history game was dragged from the dust
of its retirement, and Hall was instructed to investigate its chance of
profit.

Then Mark Twain went to work in earnest. Within a week after the
collapse of the Jones bubble he was hard at work on a new book--the
transmigration of the old "Claimant" play into a novel.

Ever since the appearance of the Yankee there had been what was
evidently a concerted movement to induce him to write a novel with
the theories of Henry George as the central idea. Letters from every
direction had urged him to undertake such a story, and these had
suggested a more serious purpose for the Claimant book. A motif in which
there is a young lord who renounces his heritage and class to come to
America and labor with his hands; who attends socialistic meetings at
which men inspired by readings of 'Progress and Poverty' and 'Looking
Backward' address their brothers of toil, could have in it something
worth while. Clemens inserted portions of some of his discarded essays
in these addresses, and had he developed this element further, and
abandoned Colonel Sellers's materialization lunacies to the oblivion
they had earned, the result might have be