One hundred and fifty dollars--two hundred dollars--
three hundred dollars were the gay figures which they
bore, and which he flaunted in the air before he sat
down at table, or rose from it to brandish, and then,
flinging his napkin into his chair, walked up and down
to exult in.

By-and-by the popularity of the play waned, and the
time came when he sickened of the whole affair, and
withdrew his agent, and took whatever gain from it the
actor apportioned him. He was apt to have these sud-
den surceases, following upon the intensities of his
earlier interest; though he seemed always to have the
notion of making something more of Colonel Sellers.
But when I arrived in Hartford in answer to his sum-
mons, I found him with no definite idea of what he
wanted to do with him. I represented that we must
have some sort of plan, and he agreed that we should
both jot down a scenario overnight and compare our
respective schemes the next morning. As the author
of a large number of little plays which have been
privately presented throughout the United States and
in parts of the United Kingdom, without ever getting
upon the public stage except for the noble ends of
charity, and then promptly getting off it, I felt au-
thorized to make him observe that his scheme was as
nearly nothing as chaos could be. He agreed hilari-
ously with me, and was willing to let it stand in proof
of his entire dramatic inability. At the same time he
liked my plot very much, which ultimated Sellers, ac-
cording to Clemens's intention, as a man crazed by his
own inventions and by his superstition that he was the
rightful heir to an English earldom. The exuberant
nature of Sellers and the vast range of his imagina-
tion served our purpose in other ways. Clemens made
him a spiritualist, whose specialty in the occult was

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