He explained his position, and added: 

I suppose the President often acts just like that; goes and makes an impossible promise, and you never find it out until it is next to impossible to break it up and set things straight again.  Well, that is just our way exactly—­one-half the administration always busy getting the family into trouble and the other half busy getting it out.

CLVXI

A “PLAYER” AND A MASTER OF ARTS

One morning early in January Clemens received the following note: 

DALY’S theater, new York, January 2, 1888.

Mr. Augustin Daly will be very much pleased to have Mr. S. L. Clemens meet Mr. Booth, Mr. Barrett, and Mr. Palmer and a few friends at lunch on Friday next, January 6th (at one o’clock in Delmonico’s), to discuss the formation of a new club which it is thought will claim your (sic) interest.

R. S. V. P.

There were already in New York a variety of literary and artistic societies, such as The Kinsmen and Tile clubs, with which Clemens was more or less associated.  It was proposed now to form a more comprehensive and pretentious organization—­one that would include the various associated arts.  The conception of this new club, which was to be called The Players, had grown out of a desire on the part of Edwin Booth to confer some enduring benefit upon the members of his profession.  It had been discussed during a summer cruise on Mr. E. C. Benedict’s steam-yacht by a little party which, besides the owner, consisted of Booth himself, Aldrich, Lawrence Barrett, William Bispham, and Laurence Hutton.  Booth’s original idea had been to endow some sort of an actors’ home, but after due consideration this did not appear to be the best plan.  Some one proposed a club, and Aldrich, with never-failing inspiration, suggested its name, The Players, which immediately impressed Booth and the others.  It was then decided that members of all the kindred arts should be admitted, and this was the plan discussed and perfected at the Daly luncheon.  The guests became charter members, and The Players became an incorporated fact early in January, 1888. —­[Besides Mr. Booth himself, the charter members were:  Lawrence Barrett, William Bispham, Samuel L. Clemens, Augustin Daly, Joseph F. Daly, John Drew, Henry Edwards, Laurence Hutton, Joseph Jefferson, John A. Lane, James Lewis, Brander Matthews, Stephen H. Olin, A. M. Palmer, and William T. Sherman.]—­Booth purchased the fine old brownstone residence at 16 Gramercy Park, and had expensive alterations made under the directions of Stanford White to adapt it for club purposes.  He bore the entire cost, furnished it from garret to cellar, gave it his books and pictures, his rare collections of every sort.  Laurence Hutton, writing of it afterward, said: