| | 1 | Author: | Twain, Mark, 1835-1910 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | Innocents Abroad  | | | | Published: | 1996 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | 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: | | | Similar Items: | Find |
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