Howells, in turn, proposed a plan which Clemens approved, and they set to work.  Howells could imitate Clemens’s literary manner, and they had a riotously jubilant fortnight working out their humors.  Howells has told about it in his book, and he once related it to the writer of this memoir.  He said: 

“Clemens took one scene and I another.  We had loads and loads of fun about it.  We cracked our sides laughing over it as it went along.  We thought it mighty good, and I think to this day that it was mighty good.  We called the play ‘Colonel Sellers.’  We revived him.  Clemens had a notion of Sellers as a spiritual medium-there was a good deal of excitement about spiritualism then; he also had a notion of Sellers leading a women’s temperance crusade.  We conceived the idea of Sellers wanting to try, in the presence of the audience, how a man felt who had fallen, through drink.  Sellers was to end with a sort of corkscrew performance on the stage.  He always wore a marvelous fire extinguisher, one of his inventions, strapped on his back, so in any sudden emergency, he could give proof of its effectiveness.”

In connection with the extinguisher, Howells provided Sellers with a pair of wings, which Sellers declared would enable him to float around in any altitude where the flames might break out.  The extinguisher, was not to be charged with water or any sort of liquid, but with Greek fire, on the principle that like cures like; in other words, the building was to be inoculated with Greek fire against the ordinary conflagration.  Of course the whole thing was as absurd as possible, and, reading the old manuscript to-day, one is impressed with the roaring humor of some of the scenes, and with the wild extravagance of the farce motive, not wholly warranted by the previous character of Sellers, unless, indeed, he had gone stark mad.  It is, in fact, Sellers caricatured.  The gentle, tender side of Sellers—­the best side—­the side which Clemens and Howells themselves cared for most, is not there.  Chapter III of Mark Twain’s novel, The American Claimant, contains a scene between Colonel Sellers and Washington Hawkins which presents the extravagance of the Colonel’s materialization scheme.  It is a modified version of one of the scenes in the play, and is as amusing and unoffending as any.

The authors’ rollicking joy in their work convinced them that they had produced a masterpiece for which the public in general, and the actors in particular, were waiting.  Howells went back to Boston tired out, but elate in the prospect of imminent fortune.

CXLVI

DISTINGUISHED VISITORS

Meantime, while Howells had been in Hartford working at the play with Clemens, Matthew Arnold had arrived in Boston.  On inquiring for Howells, at his home, the visitor was told that he had gone to see Mark Twain.  Arnold was perhaps the only literary Englishman left who had not accepted Mark Twain at his larger value.  He seemed surprised and said: