a pity that you quit, for Mrs. T. didn’t mind it, if I remember rightly.  Ah, it is turning one’s back upon a kindly Providence to spurn away from us the good creature he sent to make the breath of life a luxury as well as a necessity, enjoyable as well as useful.  To go quit smoking, when there ain’t any sufficient excuse for it!—­why, my old boy, when they used to tell me I would shorten my life ten years by smoking, they little knew the devotee they were wasting their puerile words upon; they little knew how trivial and valueless I would regard a decade that had no smoking in it!  But I won’t persuade you, Twichell—­I won’t until I see you again—­but then we’ll smoke for a week together, and then shut off again.

LXXX

LITERARY PROJECTS

The success of the Innocents naturally made a thrifty publisher like Bliss anxious for a second experiment.  He had begun early in the year to talk about another book, but nothing had come of it beyond a project or two, more or less hazy and unpursued.  Clemens at one time developed a plan for a Noah’s Ark book, which was to detail the cruise of the Ark in diaries kept by various members of it-Shem, Ham, and the others.  He really wrote some of it at the time, and it was an idea he never entirely lost track of.  All along among his manuscripts appear fragments from those ancient voyagers.  One of the earlier entries will show the style and purpose of the undertaking.  It is from Shem’s record: 

Friday:  Papa’s birthday.  He is 600 years old.  We celebrated it in a big, black tent.  Principal men of the tribe present.  Afterward they were shown over the ark, which was looking desolate and empty and dreary on account of a misunderstanding with the workmen about wages.  Methuselah was as free with his criticisms as usual, and as voluble and familiar, which I and my brothers do not like; for we are past our one hundredth year and married.  He still calls me Shemmy, just as he did when I was a child of sixty.  I am still but a youth, it is true, but youth has its feelings, and I do not like this . . . .

    Saturday:  Keeping the Sabbath.

Sunday:  Papa has yielded the advance and everybody is hard at work.  The shipyard is so crowded that the men hinder each other; everybody hurrying or being hurried; the rush and confusion and shouting and wrangling are astonishing to our family, who have always been used to a quiet, country life.

It was from this germ that in a later day grew the diaries of Adam and Eve, though nothing very satisfactory ever came of this preliminary attempt.  The author had faith in it, however.  To Bliss he wrote: 

    I mean to take plenty of time and pains with the Noah’s Ark book;
    maybe it will be several years before it is all written, but it will
    be a perfect lightning striker when it is done.