The Innocents Abroad

Description

Occasionally, during the following month, I dropped in at 117 Wall Street to inquire howthe repairing and refurnishing of the vessel was coming on, how additions to the passengerlist were averaging, how many people the committee were decreeing not "select" every dayand banishing in sorrow and tribulation. I was glad to know that we were to have a littleprinting press on board and issue a daily newspaper of our own. I was glad to learn thatour piano, our parlor organ, and our melodeon were to be the best instruments of the kindthat could be had in the market. I was proud to observe that among our excursionists werethree ministers of the gospel, eight doctors, sixteen or eighteen ladies, several military andnaval chieftains with sounding titles, an ample crop of "Professors" of various kinds, and agentleman who had "COMMISSIONER OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA TO EUROPE, ASIA, AND AFRICA" thundering after his name in one awful blast I had carefully preparedmyself to take rather a back seat in that ship because of the uncommonly select materialthat would alone be permitted to pass through the camel's eye of that committee oncredentials; I had schooled myself to expect an imposing array of military and naval heroesand to have to set that back seat still further back in consequence of it maybe; but I statefrankly that I was all unprepared for this crusher.I fell under that titular avalanche a torn and blighted thing. I said that if that potentatemust go over in our ship, why, I supposed he must-but that to my thinking, when theUnited States considered it necessary to send a dignitary of that tonnage across the ocean, it would be in better taste, and safer, to take him apart and cart him over in sections inseveral ships.