The American Claimant and Other Stories and Sketches The Colonel Mulberry Sellers here reintroduced to the public is the same person who appeared as Eschol Sellers in the first edition of the tale entitled The Gilded Age years ago, and as Beriah Sellers in the subsequent editions of the same book, and finally as Mulberry Sellers in the drama played afterwards by John T. Raymond. The name was changed from Eschol to Beriah to accommodate an Eschol Sellers who rose up out of the vasty deeps of uncharted space and preferred his request- backed by threat of a libel suit-then went his way appeased, and came no more. In the play Beriah had to be dropped to satisfy another member of the race, and Mulberry was substituted in the hope that the objectors would be tired by that time and let it pass unchallenged. So far it has occupied the field in peace; therefore we chance it again, feeling reasonably safe, this time, under shelter of ihe statute of limitations. Mark Twain

The American Claimant is about Americans, the way they view themselves, the way they are viewed by others through the eyes of a British nobleman. Even though a century has passed since the book was written, most of the acute observations are as true today as when it was written. A young English nobleman, Viscount Berkeley, has determined to renounce his aristocratic station, emigrate to America and make his way by ability alone. His place in England is taken by Colonel Sellers, who believes himself the descendant of the family. Each learns that his conceptions of the society he is entering are wildly incorrect, as Twain reiterates a favorite theme--disenchantment with democracy. Other selections include "The £1,000,000 Bank-Note" which charts the magical rags-to-riches ascent of a virtuous and resourceful mining broker's clerk from San Francisco who arrives in London with a single dollar in his pocket, and proceeds to ultimate and splendid financial success and fame in London society--a paean to ingenuity and a celebration of its cunning confidence-man narrator.

The Earl of Rossmore is deeply distressed when an American of no account claims his title--Novelist.