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Now let's just leave this thing to Providence for 24 hours--you bet it
will come out all right.
Yours ever
MARK.
He was writing a book with Warner at this time--The Gilded Age
--the two authors having been challenged by their wives one night at
dinner to write a better book than the current novels they had been
discussing with some severity. Clemens already had a story in his
mind, and Warner agreed to collaborate in the writing. It was begun
without delay. Clemens wrote the first three hundred and
ninety-nine pages, and read there aloud to Warner, who took up the
story at this point and continued it through twelve chapters, after
which they worked alternately, and with great enjoyment. They also
worked rapidly, and in April the story was completed. For a
collaboration by two men so different in temperament and literary
method it was a remarkable performance.
Another thing Mark Twain did that winter was to buy some land on
Farmington Avenue and begin the building of a home. He had by no
means given up returning to England, and made his plans to sail with
Mrs. Clemens and Susy in May. Miss Clara Spaulding, of Elmira
-
-[Later Mrs. John B. Stanchfield, of New York.]--a girlhood friend
of Mrs. Clemens--was to accompany them.
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