Published in 1873, Mark Twain's and Charles Dudley Warner's The Gilded Age went on stage two years later. By the book and the play, Colonel Mulberry Sellers became, at least to some, a dramatic illustration of what was afoot in that era. In March, 1875, the Chicago Times carried an entertainment notice for the opening of that play in that city. This account told that the author of the book and the playwright had envisioned Lawrence Barrett for a role in the play; but it dawned on them that someone with more of a comedic inclination would do better. Perhaps an intimation of that change of tone can be seen in a change of name. The colonel of the novel had a biblical first name, Beriah (Genesis 46ø17). That colonel now became Mulberry Sellers, and a humorous actor, John T. Raymond, entered the scene for which Lawrence Barrett had been considered. As this Chicago Times writer put it, the play, with Raymond, had created a "sensation" in New York City, in a run of 120 days. Now Chicago would share the excitement.¹

     Whoever wrote this theater piece for the Times then waxed thoughtfully about Colonel Sellers and what he betokened there in the 1870s. A "thoughtful observer," reacting to the scientific and philosophical developments of recent years, might well contend, "Surely, this is the intellectual age." A "cynical materialist," noting such huge accomplishments in such things as railroad construction, might reply, "It is the iron age." This commentator in this staunchly Democratic paper then adduced the outlook of the "intelligent voter"Ñ"chafing under the imposition of enormous taxes and the impudent assumption of elected servants of the people, who have rapidly degenerated into political demagogues"Ñwho might style it, "the age of cheek." Without denying some aptness for each of these, this commentator moved to what seemed a more satisfactory designation.

Éthe ingenious manipulator of impracticable schemes, persistently blowing prismatic-hued bubbles from the policy pipe, the Col. Sellers of the exchange and of society, enthusiastically characterizes it as the period of progress, and indeed the gilded age. Gilded in truth, but scarcely goldenÉ.Who does not know him, and who has not met him, voluble, plausible, and ever sanguine, just at the moment deep in the elaboration of some "big thing" with "millions in it."²