The interest in Tom and Huck, or the inspiration for their adventures, gave out at last, or was superseded by a more immediate demand.  As early as May, Goodman, in San Francisco, had seen a play announced there, presenting the character of Colonel Sellers, dramatized by Gilbert S. Densmore and played by John T. Raymond.  Goodman immediately wrote Clemens; also a letter came from Warner, in Hartford, who had noticed in San Francisco papers announcements of the play.  Of course Clemens would take action immediately; he telegraphed, enjoining the performance.  Then began a correspondence with the dramatist and actor.  This in time resulted in an amicable arrangement, by which the dramatist agreed to dispose of his version to Clemens.  Clemens did not wait for it to arrive, but began immediately a version of his own.  Just how much or how little of Densmore’s work found its way into the completed play, as presented by Raymond later, cannot be known now.  Howells conveys the impression that Clemens had no hand in its authorship beyond the character of Sellers as taken from the book.  But in a letter still extant, which Clemens wrote to Howells at the time, he says: 

I worked a month on my play, and launched it in New York last Wednesday.  I believe it will go.  The newspapers have been complimentary.  It is simply a setting for one character, Colonel Sellers.  As a play I guess it will not bear critical assault in force.

The Warners are as charming as ever.  They go shortly to the devil for a year—­that is, to Egypt.

Raymond, in a letter which he wrote to the Sun, November 3, 1874, declared that “not one line” of Densmore’s dramatization was used, “except that which was taken bodily from The Gilded Age.”  During the newspaper discussion of the matter, Clemens himself prepared a letter for the Hartford Post.  This letter was suppressed, but it still exists.  In it he says: 

I entirely rewrote the play three separate and distinct times.  I had expected to use little of his [Densmore’s] language and but little of his plot.  I do not think there are now twenty sentences of Mr. Densmore’s in the play, but I used so much of his plot that I wrote and told him that I should pay him about as much more as I had already paid him in case the play proved a success.  I shall keep my word.

This letter, written while the matter was fresh in his mind, is undoubtedly in accordance with the facts.  That Densmore was fully satisfied may be gathered from an acknowledgment, in which he says:  “Your letter reached me on the ad, with check.  In this place permit me to thank you for the very handsome manner in which you have acted in this matter.”