The idea of the play interested Howells, but he had twinges of conscience in the matter of using Orion as material.  He wrote:  “More than once I have taken the skeleton of that comedy of ours and viewed it with tears.....  I really have a compunction or two about helping to put your brother into drama.  You can say that he is your brother, to do what you like with him, but the alien hand might inflict an incurable hurt on his tender heart.”

As a matter of fact, Orion Clemens had a keen appreciation of his own shortcomings, and would have enjoyed himself in a play as much as any observer of it.  Indeed, it is more than likely that he would have been pleased at the thought of such distinguished dramatization.  From the next letter one might almost conclude that he had received a hint of this plan, and was bent upon supplying rich material.

To W. D. Howells, in Boston: 

Elmira, Oct. 9 ’79.  My dear Howells,—­Since my return, the mail facilities have enabled Orion to keep me informed as to his intentions.  Twenty-eight days ago it was his purpose to complete a work aimed at religion, the preface to which he had already written.  Afterward he began to sell off his furniture, with the idea of hurrying to Leadville and tackling silver-mining—­threw up his law den and took in his sign.  Then he wrote to Chicago and St. Louis newspapers asking for a situation as “paragrapher”—­enclosing a taste of his quality in the shape of two stanzas of “humorous rhymes.”  By a later mail on the same day he applied to New York and Hartford insurance companies for copying to do.

However, it would take too long to detail all his projects.  They comprise a removal to south-west Missouri; application for a reporter’s berth on a Keokuk paper; application for a compositor’s berth on a St. Louis paper; a re-hanging of his attorney’s sign, “though it only creaks and catches no flies;” but last night’s letter informs me that he has retackled the religious question, hired a distant den to write in, applied to my mother for $50 to re-buy his furniture, which has advanced in value since the sale—­purposes buying $25 worth of books necessary to his labors which he had previously been borrowing, and his first chapter is already on its way to me for my decision as to whether it has enough ungodliness in it or not.  Poor Orion!

Your letter struck me while I was meditating a project to beguile you, and John Hay and Joe Twichell, into a descent upon Chicago which I dream of making, to witness the re-union of the great Commanders of the Western Army Corps on the 9th of next month.  My sluggish soul needs a fierce upstirring, and if it would not get it when Grant enters the meeting place I must doubtless “lay” for the final resurrection.  Can you and Hay go?  At the same time, confound it, I doubt if I can go myself, for this book isn’t done yet.  But I would give a heap to be there.  I mean to heave some holiness into the Hartford primaries when I go back; and if there was a solitary office in the land which majestic ignorance and incapacity, coupled with purity of heart, could fill, I would run for it.  This naturally reminds me of Bret Harte—­but let him pass.