October 2 Sunday – The Brooklyn Eagle ran a short piece on page 15 echoing recent negative reviews of The American Claimant (Colonel Sellers as a Scientist) play.

DOWN ON MARK TWAIN

“Nym Crinkle” [Andrew Carpenter Wheeler] descants in the Mirror to this effect: I ought to chronicle the lightning failure of Mark Twain’s play, “The American Claimant,” although, to tell the truth, it has already been chronicled with an unanimity that “leaves nothing to be desired.” I confess that the manner in which the theater exposed Mark Twain’s absolute emptiness gave me a new respect for the theater. He has been figuring successfully for a long time in literature as a brilliant man. He couldn’t do it on the stage. His attempt to be a playwright reminded me of a comic slugger’s attempt to play Hamlet. Did you ever see a clown spout? Well, you’ve seen a watering cart! Your mere funny man cannot do all things. He can’t conduct a funeral and he can’t make a play. His spots of humor in “The American Claimant” was like an unwashed floor with several small rugs askew on it. It was too bad when you considered Burbank, for there was honest ability, who could have made a better play with his hands tied behind him, trying to carry this popular old buffoon on his back. I never saw mere humor so tiresome, so undramatic, so imbecile. You can’t dramatize a comic almanac. You can make the public swallow any amount of rubbish if you put it on the Elevated news stands, but you put it on the boards for half an hour and see the result. Such hog was as “Peck’s Bad Boy” has to be redeemed by activity and bustle. People have to get round and tumble over each other at least. They don’t even do that in Mark Twain’s drama. It’s a kind of comic elegy, delivered by one man and badly accompanied.