John Brougham said, “Read the list of things which the critics have condemned in the piece, and you have unassailable proofs that the play contains all the requirements of success and a long life.”

That is true.  Nearly every time the audience roared I knew it was over something that would be condemned in the morning (justly, too) but must be left in—­for low comedies are written for the drawing-room, the kitchen and the stable, and if you cut out the kitchen and the stable the drawing-room can’t support the play by itself.

There was as much money in the house the first two nights as in the first
ten of Sellers.  Haven’t heard from the third—­I came away. 
                                   Yrs ever,
          
                                   mark.

In a former letter we have seen how Mark Twain, working on a story that was to stand as an example of his best work, and become one of his surest claims to immortality (The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn), displayed little enthusiasm in his undertaking.  In the following letter, which relates the conclusion of his detective comedy, we find him at the other extreme, on very tiptoe with enthusiasm over something wholly without literary value or dramatic possibility.  One of the hall-marks of genius is the inability to discriminate as to the value of its output.  “Simon Wheeler, Amateur Detective” was a dreary, absurd, impossible performance, as wild and unconvincing in incident and dialogue as anything out of an asylum could well be.  The title which he first chose for it, “Balaam’s Ass,” was properly in keeping with the general scheme.  Yet Mark Twain, still warm with the creative fever, had the fullest faith in it as a work of art and a winner of fortune.  It would never see the light of production, of course.  We shall see presently that the distinguished playwright, Dion Boucicault, good-naturedly complimented it as being better than “Ahi Sin.”  One must wonder what that skilled artist really thought, and how he could do even this violence to his conscience.

To W. D. Howells, in Boston: 

Elmira, Wednesday P.M. (1877) My dear Howells,—­It’s finished.  I was misled by hurried mis-paging.  There were ten pages of notes, and over 300 pages of Ms when the play was done.  Did it in 42 hours, by the clock; 40 pages of the Atlantic—­but then of course it’s very “fat.”  Those are the figures, but I don’t believe them myself, because the thing’s impossible.

But let that pass.  All day long, and every day, since I finished (in the rough) I have been diligently altering, amending, re-writing, cutting down.  I finished finally today.  Can’t think of anything else in the way of an improvement.  I thought I would stick to it while the interest was hot—­and I am mighty glad I did.  A week from now it will be frozen—­then revising would be drudgery. (You see I learned something from the fatal blunder of putting “Ah Sin” aside before it was finished.)