His work that summer consisted mainly of two extensive undertakings, one of which he completed without delay.  He still had the dramatic ambition, and he believed that he was capable now of constructing a play entirely from his own resources.

To Howells, in June, he wrote: 

To-day I am deep in a comedy which I began this morning—­principal character an old detective.  I skeletoned the first act and wrote the second to-day, and am dog-tired now.  Fifty-four pages of Ms. in seven hours.

Seven days later, the Fourth of July, he said: 

I have piled up one hundred and fifty-one pages on my comedy.  The first, second and fourth acts are done, and done to my satisfaction, too.  To-morrow and next day will finish the third act, and the play.  Never had so much fun over anything in my life never such consuming interest and delight.  And just think!  I had Sol Smith Russell in my mind’s eye for the old detective’s part, and bang it! he has gone off pottering with Oliver Optic, or else the papers lie.

He was working with enthusiasm, you see, believing in it with a faith which, alas, was no warrant for its quality.  Even Howells caught his enthusiasm and became eager to see the play, and to have the story it contained told for the Atlantic.

But in the end it proved a mistake.  Dion Boucicault, when he read the manuscript, pronounced it better than “Ah Sin,” but that was only qualified praise.  Actors who considered the play, anxious enough to have Mark Twain’s name on their posters and small bills, were obliged to admit that, while it contained marvelous lines, it wouldn’t “go.”  John Brougham wrote: 

There is an absolute “embarrassment of riches” in your “Detective” most assuredly, but the difficulty is to put it into profitable form.  The quartz is there in abundance, only requiring the necessary manipulation to extract the gold.

In narrative structure the story would be full of life, character, and the most exuberant fun, but it is altogether too diffuse in its present condition for dramatic representation, and I confess I do not feel sufficient confidence in my own experience (even if I had the time, which on reflection I find I have not) to undertake what, under different circumstances, would be a “labor of love.”

Yours sincerely, John Brougham.

That was frank, manly, and to the point; it covered the ground exactly.  “Simon Wheeler, the Amateur Detective,” had plenty of good material in it—­plenty of dialogue and situations; but the dialogue wouldn’t play, and the situations wouldn’t act.  Clemens realized that perhaps the drama was not, after all, his forte; he dropped “Simon Wheeler,” lost his interest in “Ah Sin,” even leased “Colonel Sellers” for the coming season, and so, in a sort of fury, put theatrical matters out of his mind.