elay in the beginning. Clemens immediately set to work and completed
399 pages of the manuscript, the first eleven chapters of the book,
before the early flush of enthusiasm waned.

Warner came over then, and Clemens read it aloud to him. Warner had
some plans for the story, and took it up at this point, and continued
it through the next twelve chapters; and so they worked alternately, "in
the superstition," as Mark Twain long afterward declared, "that we were
writing one coherent yarn, when I suppose, as a matter of fact, we were
writing two incoherent ones."--[The reader may be interested in the
division of labor. Clemens wrote chapters I to XI; also chapters XXIV,
XXV, XXVII, XXVIII, XXX, XXXII, XXXIII, XXXIV, XXXVI, XXXVII, XLII,
XLIII, XLV, LI, LII, LIII, LVII, LIX, LX, LXI, LXII, and portions of
chapters XXXV, XLIX, LVI. Warner wrote chapters XII to XXIII; also
chapters XXVI, XXIX, XXXI, XXXVIII, XXXIX, XL, XLI, XLIV, XLVI, XLVII,
XLVIII, L, LIV, LV, LVIII, LXIII, and portions of chapters XXXV, XLIX,
and LVI. The work was therefore very evenly divided.

There was another co-worker on The Gilded Age before the book was
finally completed. This was J. Hammond Trumbull, who prepared the
variegated, marvelous cryptographic chapter headings: Trumbull was the
most learned man that ever lived in Hartford. He was familiar with all
literary and scientific data, and according to Clemens could swear
in twenty-seven languages. It was thought to be a choice idea to
get Trumbull to supply a lingual medley of quotations to precede the
chapters in the new book, the purpose being to excite interest and
possibly to amuse the reader--a purpose which to some extent appears to
have miscarried.]

The book was begun in February and finished in April, so the work did
not lag. The result, if not highly artistic, made astonishingly good
reading. Warner had the touch of romance, Clemens, the gift of creating,
or at least of portraying, human realities. Most of his characters
reflected intimate personalities of his early life. Besides the
apotheosis of James Lampton into the immortal Sellers, Orion became
Washington Hawkins, Squire Clemens the judge, while Mark Twain's own
personality, in a greater or lesser degree, is reflected in most of his
creations. As for the Tennessee land, so long a will-o'the-wisp and a
bugbear, it became tangible property at last. Only a year or two before
Clemens had written to Orion:

Oh, here! I don't wan