urton, Charles H. Clark, of the
Courant, Warner, and Twichell, with others of their kind. Clemens had
been elected after his first sojourn in England (February, 1873),
and had then read a paper on the "License of the Press." The club met
alternate Mondays, from October to May. There was one paper for each
evening, and, after the usual fashion of such clubs, the reading was
followed by discussion. Members of that time agree that Mark Twain's
association with the club had a tendency to give it a life, or at least
an exhilaration, which it had not previously known. His papers were
serious in their purpose he always preferred to be serious--but they
evidenced the magic gift which made whatever he touched turn to literary
jewelry.

Psychic theories and phenomena always attracted Mark Twain. In
thought-transference, especially, he had a frank interest--an interest
awakened and kept alive by certain phenomena--psychic manifestations we
call them now. In his association with Mrs. Clemens it not
infrequently happened that one spoke the other's thought, or perhaps a
long-procrastinated letter to a friend would bring an answer as quickly
as mailed; but these are things familiar to us all. A more startling
example of thought-communication developed at the time of which we are
writing, an example which raised to a fever-point whatever interest he
may have had in the subject before. (He was always having these vehement
interests--rages we may call them, for it would be inadequate to speak
of them as fads, inasmuch as they tended in the direction of human
enlightenment, or progress, or reform.)

Clemens one morning was lying in bed when, as he says, "suddenly a
red-hot new idea came whistling down into my camp." The idea was
that the time was ripe for a book that would tell the story of the
Comstock-of the Nevada silver mines. It seemed to him that the person
best qualified for the work was his old friend William Wright--Dan
de Quille. He had not heard from Dan, or of him, for a long time, but
decided to write and urge him to take up the idea. He prepared the
letter, going fully into the details of his plan, as was natural for
him to do, then laid it aside until he could see Bliss and secure his
approval of the scheme from a publishing standpoint. Just a week later,
it was the 9th of March, a letter came--a thick letter bearing a Nevada
postmark, and addressed in a handwriting which he presently recognized
as De Quille's. To a visit