make the breath of life a luxury as well as a necessity, enjoyable
as well as useful. To go quit smoking, when there ain't any
sufficient excuse for it!--why, my old boy, when they used to tell
me I would shorten my life ten years by smoking, they little knew
the devotee they were wasting their puerile words upon; they little
knew how trivial and valueless I would regard a decade that had no
smoking in it! But I won't persuade you, Twichell--I won't until I
see you again--but then we'll smoke for a week together, and then
shut off again.

LXXX. LITERARY PROJECTS

The success of the Innocents naturally made a thrifty publisher like
Bliss anxious for a second experiment. He had begun early in the year to
talk about another book, but nothing had come of it beyond a project or
two, more or less hazy and unpursued. Clemens at one time developed a
plan for a Noah's Ark book, which was to detail the cruise of the Ark
in diaries kept by various members of it-Shem, Ham, and the others.
He really wrote some of it at the time, and it was an idea he never
entirely lost track of. All along among his manuscripts appear fragments
from those ancient voyagers. One of the earlier entries will show the
style and purpose of the undertaking. It is from Shem's record:

Friday: Papa's birthday. He is 600 years old. We celebrated it in
a big, black tent. Principal men of the tribe present. Afterward
they were shown over the ark, which was looking desolate and empty
and dreary on account of a misunderstanding with the workmen about
wages. Methuselah was as free with his criticisms as usual, and as
voluble and familiar, which I and my brothers do not like; for we
are past our one hundredth year and married. He still calls me
Shemmy, just as he did when I was a child of sixty. I am still but
a youth, it is true, but youth has its feelings, and I do not like
this....

Saturday: Keeping the Sabbath.

Sunday: Papa has yielded the advance and everybody is hard at work.
The shipyard is so crowded that the men hinder each other; everybody
hurrying or being hurried; the rush and confusion and shouting and
wrangling are astonishing to our family, who have always been used
to a quiet, country life.

It was from this germ that in a later day grew the diaries of Adam and
Eve, though nothing very satisfactory ever came of this preliminary
attempt.