he heard of it that it must come to him in the end.
In the end it did, from my hand, for Clemens would
not meet him. I found him in a mood of sweet
reasonableness, perhaps the more softened by one of
those lunches which our publisher, the hospitable
James R. Osgood, was always bringing people together
over in Boston. He said that he could not do
the play that winter, but he was sure that he should
like it, and he had no doubt he would do it the next
winter. So I gave him the manuscript, in spite
of Clemens’s charges, for his suspicions and
rancors were such that he would not have had me leave
it for a moment in the actor’s hands. But
it seemed a conclusion that involved success and fortune
for us. In due time, but I do not remember how
long after, Raymond declared himself delighted with
the piece; he entered into a satisfactory agreement
for it, and at the beginning of the next season he
started with it to Buffalo, where he was to give a
first production. At Rochester he paused long
enough to return it, with the explanation that a friend
had noted to him the fact that Colonel Sellers in
the play was a lunatic, and insanity was so serious
a thing that it could not be represented on the stage
without outraging the sensibilities of the audience;
or words to that effect. We were too far off
to allege Hamlet to the contrary, or King Lear, or
to instance the delight which generations of readers
throughout the world had taken in the mad freaks of
Don Quixote. Whatever were the real reasons of
Raymond for rejecting the play, we had to be content
with those he gave, and to set about getting it into
other hands. In this effort we failed even more
signally than before, if that were possible.
At last a clever and charming elocutionist, who had
long wished to get himself on the stage, heard of
it and asked to see it. We would have shown it
to any one by this time, and we very willingly showed
it to him. He came to Hartford and did some scenes
from it for us. I must say he did them very well,
quite as well as Raymond could have done them, in
whose manner he did them. But now, late toward
spring, the question was where he could get an engagement
with the play, and we ended by hiring a theatre in
New York for a week of trial performances.
Clemens came on with me to Boston, where we were going
to make some changes in the piece, and where we made
them to our satisfaction, but not to the effect of
that high rapture which we had in the first draft.
He went back to Hartford, and then the cold fit came
upon me, and “in visions of the night, in slumberings
upon the bed,” ghastly forms of failure appalled
me, and when I rose in the morning I wrote him:
“Here is a play which every manager has put
out-of-doors and which every actor known to us has
refused, and now we go and give it to an elocutioner.
We are fools.” Whether Clemens agreed with
me or not in my conclusion, he agreed with me in my
premises, and we promptly bought our play off the