September 23 Friday – Sam and Howells’ play, The American Claimant (Colonel Sellers as a Scientist) was performed with Alfred P. Burbank at the Lyceum Theatre in New York [MTNJ 3: 300n1].

The New York Times of Sept. 24, p.5 delivered the bad news:

MR. BURBANK’S ENTERTAINMENT.

Mr. A.P. Burbank, distinguished as a lecture hall humorist, gave an agreeable entertainment at the Lyceum Theatre yesterday afternoon [Sept. 23] before a large party of ladies and gentlemen. The entertainment differed in form somewhat from those hitherto given by Mr. Burbank, for the programme was not made up of selections in prose and verse by several authors, but comprised only one piece by a single author, which involved a more or less coherent story, and was described on the bill as a “farcial comedy.” Mr. Clemens, of Hartford, wrote the piece, so it may be inferred that it is not a play. Mr. Clemens lacks something, may be it is patience, perhaps it is talent, that a playwright should possess. In the course of his long and eventful career he must, through the courtesy of managers, have seen plays acted, but in his own attempts at play-making he has never given evidence that he comprehends the meaning of the word “dramatic.” “The American Claimant,” produced yesterday afternoon, is as much like a play as a school exhibition dialogue…It is impossible for a healthy person to refrain from laughing at Mark Twain’s drollery. He is an original humorist, beyond dispute, but he is not a dramatist. “The American Claimant” has neither plot nor action.