Arriving at the farm in June, Clemens had a fresh crop of ideas for
stories of many lengths and varieties. His note-book of that time
is full of motifs and plots, most of them of that improbable and
extravagant kind which tended to defeat any literary purpose, whether
humorous or otherwise. It seems worth while setting down one or more of
these here, for they are characteristic of the myriad conceptions that
came and went, and beyond these written memoranda left no trace behind.
Here is a fair example of many:
Two men starving on a raft. The pauper has a Boston cracker,
resolves to keep it till the multimillionaire is beginning to
starve, then make him pay $50,000 for it. Millionaire agrees.
Pauper's cupidity rises, resolves to wait and get more; twenty-four
hours later asks him a million for the cracker. Millionaire agrees.
Pauper has a wild dream of becoming enormously rich off his cracker;
backs down; lies all night building castles in the air; next day
raises his price higher and higher, till millionaire has offered
$100,000,000, every cent he has in the world. Pauper accepts.
Millionaire: “Now give it to me.”
Pauper: “No; it isn't a trade until you sign documental history of
the transaction and make an oath to pay.”
While pauper is finishing the document millionaire sees a ship.
When pauper says, “Sign and take the cracker,” millionaire smiles a
smile, declines, and points to the ship.
Yet this is hardly more extravagant than another idea that is mentioned
repeatedly among the notes--that of an otherwise penniless man wandering
about London with a single million-pound bank-note in his possession, a
motif which developed into a very good story indeed.