It was with the increased scale of living that Clemens had become especially eager for some source of commercial profit; something that would yield a return, not in paltry thousands, but hundreds of thousands.  Like Colonel Sellers, he must have something with “millions in it.”  Almost any proposition that seemed to offer these possible millions appealed to him, and in his imagination he saw the golden freshet pouring in.

His natural taste was for a simple, inexpensive life; yet in his large hospitality, and in a certain boyish love of grandeur, he gloried in the splendor of his entertainment, the admiration and delight of his guests.  There were always guests; they were coming and going constantly.  Clemens used to say that he proposed to establish a bus line between their house and the station for the accommodation of his company.  He had the Southern hospitality.  Much company appealed to a very large element in his strangely compounded nature.  For the better portion of the year he was willing to pay the price of it, whether in money or in endurance, and Mrs. Clemens heroically did her part.  She loved these things also, in her own way.  She took pride in them, and realized that they were a part of his vast success.  Yet in her heart she often longed for the simpler life—­above all, for the farm life at Elmira.  Her spirit cried out for the rest and comfort there.  In one of her letters she says: 
    The house has been full of company, and I have been “whirled
    around.”  How can a body help it?  Oh, I cannot help sighing for the
    peace and quiet of the farm.  This is my work, and I know that I do
    very wrong when I feel chafed by it, but how can I be right about
    it?  Sometimes it seems as if the simple sight of people would drive
    me mad.  I am all wrong; if I would simply accept the fact that this
    is my work and let other things go, I know I should not be so
    fretted; but I want so much to do other things, to study and do
    things with the children, and I cannot.

    I have the best French teacher that I ever had, and if I could give
    any time to it I could not help learning French.

When we reflect on the conditions, we are inclined to say how much better it would have been to have remained there among the hills in that quiet, inexpensive environment, to have let the world go.  But that was not possible.  The game was of far larger proportions than any that could be restricted to the limits of retirement and the simpler round of life.  Mark Twain’s realm had become too large for his court to be established in a cottage.

It is hard to understand that in spite of a towering fame Mark Twain was still not regarded by certain American arbiters of reputations as a literary fixture; his work was not yet recognized by them as being of important meaning and serious purport.

In Boston, at that time still the Athens of America, he was enjoyed, delighted in; but he was not honored as being quite one of the elect.  Howells tells us that: