lic
stage except for the noble ends of charity, and then promptly getting off
it, I felt authorized to make him observe that his scheme was as nearly
nothing as chaos could be. He agreed hilariously with me, and was
willing to let it stand in proof of his entire dramatic inability. At the
same time he liked my plot very much, which ultimated Sellers, according
to Clemens's intention, as a man crazed by his own inventions and by his
superstition that he was the rightful heir to an English earldom. The
exuberant nature of Sellers and the vast range of his imagination served
our purpose in other ways. Clemens made him a spiritualist, whose
specialty in the occult was materialization; he became on impulse an
ardent temperance reformer, and he headed a procession of temperance
ladies after disinterestedly testing the deleterious effects of liquor
upon himself until he could not walk straight; always he wore a
marvellous fire-extinguisher strapped on his back, to give proof in any
emergency of the effectiveness of his invention in that way.

We had a jubilant fortnight in working the particulars of these things
out. It was not possible for Clemens to write like anybody else, but I
could very easily write like Clemens, and we took the play scene and
scene about, quite secure of coming out in temperamental agreement. The
characters remained for the most part his, and I varied them only to make
them more like his than, if possible, he could. Several years after,
when I looked over a copy of the play, I could not always tell my work
from his; I only knew that I had done certain scenes. We would work all
day long at our several tasks, and then at night, before dinner, read
them over to each other. No dramatists ever got greater joy out of their
creations, and when I reflect that the public never had the chance of
sharing our joy I pity the public from a full heart. I still believe
that the play was immensely funny; I still believe that if it could once
have got behind the footlights it would have continued to pack the house
before them for an indefinite succession of nights. But this may be my
fondness.

At any rate, it was not to be. Raymond had identified himself with
Sellers in the play-going imagination, and whether consciously or
unconsciously we constantly worked with Raymond in our minds. But before
this time bitter displeasures had risen between Clemens and Raymond, and
Clemens was determined that Raymond should never hav