The Innocents Abroad

averaging, how many people the committee were decreeing not "select" every day and banishing in sorrow and tribulation. I was glad to know that we were to have a little printing press on boa

ONER OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA TO EUROPE, ASIA, AND AFRICA" thundering after his name in one awful blast! I had carefully prepared myself to take rather a back seat in that ship because of the uncommonly select material that would alone be permitted to pass through

I supposed he must-but that to my thinking, when the United States considered it necessary to send a dignitary of that tonna

g about it than the collecting of seeds and uncommon yams and extraordinary cabbages and peculiar bullfrogs for

s ports of the country at the rate of four or five thousand a week in the aggregate. If I met a dozen individuals during that month who were not going to Europe shortly, I have no distinct remembrance of it now. I walked about the city a good deal with a young Mr. Blucher, who was booked for the excursion. He was confiding, good-natured, unsophist

'll hand it to

not going

id I understan

m not going

-- well, then, where in th

ere a

oever?-not any plac

ll but just this-st

ked out with an injured look upon his countenance. Up the street apiece he

t sailed in the Quaker City will withhold his endorsement of what I have just said. We selected a stateroom forward of the wheel, on the starboard side, "below decks." It had two berths in it, a dismal dead-light, a sink with a washbowl in it, and a long, sumptuously cushioned locker, which was to do

d to sail on a certain

decks were encumbered with trunks and valises; groups of excursionists, arrayed in unattractive traveling costumes, were moping about in a drizzling rain and looking as droopy and woebegone as so many molting chickens. The gallant flag was up, but it was under the sp

ashore of visitors-a revolution of the wheels, and we were off-the pic-nic was begun! Two very mild cheers went up from the dripping crowd on the pier

hailed from fifteen states; only a few of them had ever been to sea before; manifestly it would not do to pit them against a full-blown tempest until they had got their sea-legs on. Toward evening the two steam tugs that had accompanied us with a rollicking champagne-part

en devoted to whist and dancing; but I submit it to the unprejudiced mind if it would have been in good taste for us to engage in such frivol

e measured swell of the waves and lulled by the murmur of the distant surf, I soon passed tranquilly