The Innocents Abroad

Chapter 1

For months the great pleasure excursion to Europe and the Holy Land was

chatted about in the newspapers everywhere in America and discussed at

countless firesides. It was a novelty in the way of excursions--its like

had not been thought of before, and it compelled that interest which

attractive novelties always command. It was to be a picnic on a gigantic

scale. The participants in it, instead of freighting an ungainly steam

ferry--boat with youth and beauty and pies and doughnuts, and paddling up

some obscure creek to disembark upon a grassy lawn and wear themselves

out with a long summer day's laborious frolicking under the impression

that it was fun, were to sail away in a great steamship with flags flying

and cannon pealing, and take a royal holiday beyond the broad ocean in

many a strange clime and in many a land renowned in history! They were to

sail for months over the breezy Atlantic and the sunny Mediterranean;

they were to scamper about the decks by day, filling the ship with shouts

and laughter--or read novels and poetry in the shade of the smokestacks,

or watch for the jelly-fish and the nautilus over the side, and the

shark, the whale, and other strange monsters of the deep; and at night

they were to dance in the open air, on the upper deck, in the midst of a

ballroom that stretched from horizon to horizon, and was domed by the

bending heavens and lighted by no meaner lamps than the stars and the

magnificent moon--dance, and promenade, and smoke, and sing, and make

love, and search the skies for constellations that never associate with

the "Big Dipper" they were so tired of; and they were to see the ships of

twenty navies--the customs and costumes of twenty curious peoples--the

great cities of half a world--they were to hob-nob with nobility and hold

friendly converse with kings and princes, grand moguls, and the anointed

lords of mighty empires! It was a brave conception; it was the offspring

of a most ingenious brain. It was well advertised, but it hardly needed

it: the bold originality, the extraordinary character, the seductive

nature, and the vastness of the enterprise provoked comment everywhere

and advertised it in every household in the land. Who could read the

program of the excursion without longing to make one of the party? I will

insert it here. It is almost as good as a map. As a text for this book,

nothing could be better:

What was there lacking about that program to make it perfectly

irresistible? Nothing that any finite mind could discover. Paris,

England, Scotland, Switzerland, Italy--Garibaldi! The Grecian

Archipelago! Vesuvius! Constantinople! Smyrna! The Holy Land! Egypt and

"our friends the Bermudians"! People in Europe desiring to join the

excursion--contagious sickness to be avoided--boating at the expense of

the ship--physician on board--the circuit of the globe to be made if the

passengers unanimously desired it--the company to be rigidly selected by

a pitiless "Committee on Applications"--the vessel to be as rigidly

selected by as pitiless a "Committee on Selecting Steamer." Human nature

could not withstand these bewildering temptations. I hurried to the

treasurer's office and deposited my ten percent. I rejoiced to know that

a few vacant staterooms were still left. I did avoid a critical personal

examination into my character by that bowelless committee, but I referred

to all the people of high standing I could think of in the community who

would be least likely to know anything about me.

Shortly a supplementary program was issued which set forth that the

Plymouth Collection of Hymns would be used on board the ship. I then

paid the balance of my passage money.

I was provided with a receipt and duly and officially accepted as an

excursionist. There was happiness in that but it was tame compared to

the novelty of being "select."

This supplementary program also instructed the excursionists to provide

themselves with light musical instruments for amusement in the ship, with

saddles for Syrian travel, green spectacles and umbrellas, veils for

Egypt, and substantial clothing to use in rough pilgrimizing in the Holy

Land. Furthermore, it was suggested that although the ship's library

would afford a fair amount of reading matter, it would still be well if

each passenger would provide himself with a few guidebooks, a Bible, and

some standard works of travel. A list was appended, which consisted

chiefly of books relating to the Holy Land, since the Holy Land was part

of the excursion and seemed to be its main feature.

Reverend Henry Ward Beecher was to have accompanied the expedition, but

urgent duties obliged him to give up the idea. There were other

passengers who could have been spared better and would have been spared

more willingly. Lieutenant General Sherman was to have been of the party

also, but the Indian war compelled his presence on the plains. A popular

actress had entered her name on the ship's books, but something

interfered and she couldn't go. The "Drummer Boy of the Potomac"

deserted, and lo, we had never a celebrity left!

However, we were to have a "battery of guns" from the Navy Department (as

per advertisement) to be used in answering royal salutes; and the

document furnished by the Secretary of the Navy, which was to make

"General Sherman and party" welcome guests in the courts and camps of the

old world, was still left to us, though both document and battery, I

think, were shorn of somewhat of their original august proportions.

However, had not we the seductive program still, with its Paris, its

Constantinople, Smyrna, Jerusalem, Jericho, and "our friends the

Bermudians?" What did we care?