there have been so many in the annals of American authorship. In 1871 he
removed to Hartford, which was to be his home for thirty years; and at
the same time he gave up newspaper work.

In 1872 he wrote 'Roughing It,' and in the following year came his first
sustained attempt at fiction, the 'Gilded Age,' written in collaboration
with Charles Dudley Warner. The character of Colonel Mulberry Sellers
Mark Twain soon took out of this book to make it the central figure of a
play, which the late John T. Raymond acted hundreds of times thruout the
United States, the playgoing public pardoning the inexpertness of the
dramatist in favor of the delicious humor and the compelling veracity
with which the chief character was presented. So universal was this type
and so broadly recognizable its traits that there were many towns in
which someone accosted the actor who impersonated the ever-hopeful
schemer with the declaration: "I'm the original of _Sellers_! Didn't
Mark ever tell you? Well, he took the _Colonel_ from me!"

Encouraged by the welcome accorded to this first attempt at fiction,
Mark Twain turned to the days of his boyhood and wrote 'Tom Sawyer,'
published in 1875. He also collected his sketches, scattered here and
there in newspapers and magazines. Toward the end of the seventies he
went to Europe again with his family; and the result of this journey is
recorded in 'A Tramp Abroad,' published in 1880. Another volume of
sketches, the 'Stolen White Elephant,' was put forth in 1882; and in the
same year Mark Twain first came forward as a historical novelist--if the
'Prince and the Pauper' can fairly be called a historical novel. The
year after he sent forth the volume describing his 'Life on the
Mississippi'; and in 1884 he followed this with the story in which that
life has been crystallized forever, 'Huckleberry Finn,' the finest of
his books, the deepest in its insight, and the widest in its appeal.