The Saline County journal. [volume] (Salina, Kan.) 1871-1893, 1878-09-12
The GIIdel Age.

Wv SsSAAok IA SssO Oo0s3ASOA VA 4Os 4
Dudley Warner and his wife dropped in
upon Mark Twain, who had been gloom
lily smoking clay pipes in his den all the
week. Even the CHEEKY Joe Twichell
had been unable to shake him from his
melancholy.
"If you look from your den window
to the northeast" the parson would say,
"you can see where Gen. Hawley lives,
and his success ought to encourage y GU.
"But that makes me think of politics,
and they are curse"
"Well, look over across the street and
you can SEQ where Jewell lives. You
know he began life with his shirt sleeves
rolled up, and his arms to the elbow in
q tan vat"
"Now don't. He reminds me OF
mails and letters, and they are an abom-
nation"
"Well there's Mrs. Harriet Beecher
Stoves house next door. Sec what o
name she has made after discourage
ments."
"But slavery is gone now"
"Well, there's Dudley Warmers Sum-
mer in Garden over there. You can
almost see the pusley from here"
"That settles It. I'll get Warner
hero tonight and bother him about
pusIey."
So Warner came around, and during
the evening spoke of recent Ameri-
can novel.
dts atrocious what bosh is written
for American novels now" Warner said.
81 believe l could write better novel
myself"
"You! You write a novel !" said
Mrs. Warner, and she laughed. "Why,
you can't write Anything except about
pusley in your garden"
"Warner is quite right" Mark Twain
drawled ont. 81 have for long time
felt that could write better story than
any American novelist"
Then 1t was bis wife's turn, and when
she controlled her merriment, she said !:
"You write q story! Why, all that you
can do is to write about jumping frogs.
diets write o story, Warner, and
show these women what we can do"
Mark Twsin's blaes had departed, and
he pulled Warner up stairs to bis den,
lighted clay pipe, and talked it over
as rapidly as he can talk-about sixty
words to the minute, about half the or
binary rate. :.
"Don't let's toll Twichell until it's
done," Mark Twain suggested "because
We want to surprise him, you know"
The story was to be highly dramatic,
strictly moral, and to have q point.
Warner suggested that too many novels
had points, and Mark Twain said that it
wouldn't do to have q pointless novel,
and he was disposed to reprove Warner
when the author of the "Summer in
Garden" suggested that people would
take Marks most serious attempt as do
signed to be funny.
"That's just. it, Warner, l want to
write something 80 serious that 1t can't
be mistaken for fun"
1t being decided that the story was to
teach lesson, the two authors found
themselves brought up short in trying
to decide what the lesson was to be, and
and they prepared to mako night OF it,
forgetting all about the wives below.
Warner had q dim idea about the evils
of speculation, while. Mark Twain
thought something on the errors OF the
religious teaching OF the present day
would do, and he got warm about it.
At length Warner said he once knew
man who would make firstrate char
acter for o novel; and then he told
Mark Twain abou, Col. Eschol Sellers,
who had always been jus: on the point
IS ~ a l>;n - hia vniiliopa
"That's the thing" said Mark Twain
"name and all.
Warner protested against tho name
because he was afraid that they might
hear from Col. Sellers, but Mark Twain
was stubborn and said that tho character
and name were just the foundation for
q novel showing the dangerous effect OF
q tendency to speculate. So they decid
ed 10 build q novel on Col. Eschoi Sellers.
Each was to write certain amount ev-
cry day, meet in Mark Twains den at
night and fit the ends together, lay out
the work for the next day and talk it
over. Mark Twain was enthusiastic.
Ho insisted that Col. Sellers would be
as sad type Of the prevail
ing American evil, and that people
would be benefited by the warning.
Warner had some doubts alb out the peo-
pie looking at Col. Eschol Sellers as
in "The Gilded Age" in just
that way.
The manuscript was finished in just
month from the day on which it had
been begun, and Mark Twain, who has
. horror of writing the headings OF
chapters, thought that it would be desir-
able to get DR.. J. Hammond Trumbull,
the l,pguist, sometimes described as the
only man who can read Eliots Indian
Bible in the original, TO write the chap
ter headings IN some uniorgotten Ian
guage with unknown alphabets. This
Dr.. Trumbuil gladly did, and it ex-
plains those queer headings which made
more talk than Col. Sellers did when
the book appeared. Mark Twain has
since said that he vas glad one book
bad been published which contained
that even the critics had TO
admit they did not understand.
"The Gilded Age" sold rapidly at first,
and Mark Twain assured Warner that
the people were accepting Col. Sellers,
10 be had known all along they would,
10 all seriousness. But the sale sudden
y stopped. Mark could not under
stand il, until Parson Twichell told him
that the trouble Was that the book Was