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A JOURNEY AROUND THE WORLD BY MARK TWAIN
A JOURNEY AROUND THE WORLD BY MARK TWAIN
The Party—Across America to Vancouver—On Board the Warrimo—Steamer Chairs—The Captain—Going Home under a Cloud—A Gritty Purser—The Brightest Passenger—Remedy for Bad Habits—The Doctor and the Lumbago—A Moral Pauper—Limited Smoking—Remittance-men. Change of Costume—Fish, Snake, and Boomerang Stories—Tests of Memory—A Brahmin Expert—General Grant’s Memory—A Delicately Improper Tale Honolulu—Reminiscences of the Sandwich Islands—King Liholiho and His Royal Equipment—The Tabu—The Population of the I
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CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER I.
A man may have no bad habits and have worse. —Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar. The starting point of this lecturing-trip around the world was Paris, where we had been living a year or two. We sailed for America, and there made certain preparations. This took but little time. Two members of my family elected to go with me. Also a carbuncle. The dictionary says a carbuncle is a kind of jewel. Humor is out of place in a dictionary. We started westward from New York in midsummer, with Major Pond to
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CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER II.
When in doubt, tell the truth. —Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar. About four days out from Victoria we plunged into hot weather, and all the male passengers put on white linen clothes. One or two days later we crossed the 25th parallel of north latitude, and then, by order, the officers of the ship laid away their blue uniforms and came out in white linen ones. All the ladies were in white by this time. This prevalence of snowy costumes gave the promenade deck an invitingly cool, and cheerful an
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CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER III.
It is more trouble to make a maxim than it is to do right. —Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar. On the seventh day out we saw a dim vast bulk standing up out of the wastes of the Pacific and knew that that spectral promontory was Diamond Head, a piece of this world which I had not seen before for twenty-nine years. So we were nearing Honolulu, the capital city of the Sandwich Islands—those islands which to me were Paradise; a Paradise which I had been longing all those years to see again. Not any
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CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER IV.
A dozen direct censures are easier to bear than one morganatic compliment. —Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar. Sailed from Honolulu.—From diary: Sept. 2. Flocks of flying fish-slim, shapely, graceful, and intensely white. With the sun on them they look like a flight of silver fruit-knives. They are able to fly a hundred yards. Sept. 3. In 9 deg. 50’ north latitude, at breakfast. Approaching the equator on a long slant. Those of us who have never seen the equator are a good deal excited. I think I
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CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER V.
Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she had laid an asteroid. —Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar. WEDNESDAY, Sept. 11. In this world we often make mistakes of judgment. We do not as a rule get out of them sound and whole, but sometimes we do. At dinner yesterday evening-present, a mixture of Scotch, English, American, Canadian, and Australasian folk—a discussion broke out about the pronunciation of certain Scottish words. This was private ground, and the non
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CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VI.
He was as shy as a newspaper is when referring to its own merits. —Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar. Captain Wawn is crystal-clear on one point: He does not approve of missionaries. They obstruct his business. They make “Recruiting,” as he calls it (“Slave-Catching,” as they call it in their frank way) a trouble when it ought to be just a picnic and a pleasure excursion. The missionaries have their opinion about the manner in which the Labor Traffic is conducted, and about the recruiter’s evasio
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CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VII.
Truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it. —Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar. From Diary:—For a day or two we have been plowing among an invisible vast wilderness of islands, catching now and then a shadowy glimpse of a member of it. There does seem to be a prodigious lot of islands this year; the map of this region is freckled and fly-specked all over with them. Their number would seem to be uncountable. We are moving among the Fijis now—224 islands and islets in the group.
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CHAPTER VIII.
CHAPTER VIII.
It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress. —Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar. When one glances at the map the members of the stupendous island wilderness of the Pacific seem to crowd upon each other; but no, there is no crowding, even in the center of a group; and between groups there are lonely wide deserts of sea. Not everything is known about the islands, their peoples and their languages. A startling reminder of
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CHAPTER IX.
CHAPTER IX.
It is your human environment that makes climate. —Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar. Sept. 15—Night. Close to Australia now. Sydney 50 miles distant. That note recalls an experience. The passengers were sent for, to come up in the bow and see a fine sight. It was very dark. One could not follow with the eye the surface of the sea more than fifty yards in any direction it dimmed away and became lost to sight at about that distance from us. But if you patiently gazed into the darkness a little whil
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CHAPTER X.
CHAPTER X.
Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of Humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven. —Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar. Captain Cook found Australia in 1770, and eighteen years later the British Government began to transport convicts to it. Altogether, New South Wales received 83,000 in 53 years. The convicts wore heavy chains; they were ill-fed and badly treated by the officers set over them; they were heavily punished for even slight infractions of the rules; “th
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CHAPTER XI.
CHAPTER XI.
We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it—and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again—and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one any more. —Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar. All English-speaking colonies are made up of lavishly hospitable people, and New South Wales and its capital are like the rest in this. The English-speaking colony of the United States of
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CHAPTER XII.
CHAPTER XII.
There are those who scoff at the schoolboy, calling him frivolous and shallow: Yet it was the schoolboy who said “Faith is believing what you know ain’t so.” —Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar. In Sydney I had a large dream, and in the course of talk I told it to a missionary from India who was on his way to visit some relatives in New Zealand. I dreamed that the visible universe is the physical person of God; that the vast worlds that we see twinkling millions of miles apart in the fields of spa
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CHAPTER XIII.
CHAPTER XIII.
The timid man yearns for full value and asks a tenth. The bold man strikes for double value and compromises on par. —Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar. One is sure to be struck by the liberal way in which Australasia spends money upon public works—such as legislative buildings, town halls, hospitals, asylums, parks, and botanical gardens. I should say that where minor towns in America spend a hundred dollars on the town hall and on public parks and gardens, the like towns in Australasia spend a t
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CHAPTER XIV.
CHAPTER XIV.
We can secure other people’s approval, if we do right and try hard; but our own is worth a hundred of it, and no way has been found out of securing that. —Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar. My health had broken down in New York in May; it had remained in a doubtful but fairish condition during a succeeding period of 82 days; it broke again on the Pacific. It broke again in Sydney, but not until after I had had a good outing, and had also filled my lecture engagements. This latest break lost me th
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CHAPTER XV.
CHAPTER XV.
Truth is stranger than fiction—to some people, but I am measurably familiar with it. —Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar. Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t. Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar. The air was balmy and delicious, the sunshine radiant; it was a charming excursion. In the course of it we came to a town whose odd name was famous all over the world a quarter of a century ago—Wagga-Wagga. This was because the Tichborne
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CHAPTER XVI.
CHAPTER XVI.
There is a Moral sense, and there is an Immoral Sense. History shows us that the Moral Sense enables us to perceive morality and how to avoid it, and that the Immoral Sense enables us to perceive immorality and how to enjoy it. —Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar. Melbourne spreads around over an immense area of ground. It is a stately city architecturally as well as in magnitude. It has an elaborate system of cable-car service; it has museums, and colleges, and schools, and public gardens, and el
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CHAPTER XVII.
CHAPTER XVII.
The English are mentioned in the Bible: Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. —Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar. When we consider the immensity of the British Empire in territory, population, and trade, it requires a stern exercise of faith to believe in the figures which represent Australasia’s contribution to the Empire’s commercial grandeur. As compared with the landed estate of the British Empire, the landed estate dominated by any other Power except one—Russia—is not very
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CHAPTER XVIII.
CHAPTER XVIII.
It is easier to stay out than get out. —Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar. The train was now exploring a beautiful hill country, and went twisting in and out through lovely little green valleys. There were several varieties of gum trees; among them many giants. Some of them were bodied and barked like the sycamore; some were of fantastic aspect, and reminded one of the quaint apple trees in Japanese pictures. And there was one peculiarly beautiful tree whose name and breed I did not know. The fol
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CHAPTER XIX.
CHAPTER XIX.
Pity is for the living, Envy is for the dead. —Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar. The successor of the sheet-iron hamlet of the mangrove marshes has that other Australian specialty, the Botanical Gardens. We cannot have these paradises. The best we could do would be to cover a vast acreage under glass and apply steam heat. But it would be inadequate, the lacks would still be so great: the confined sense, the sense of suffocation, the atmospheric dimness, the sweaty heat—these would all be there,
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CHAPTER XX.
CHAPTER XX.
It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them. —Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar. From diary: Mr. G. called. I had not seen him since Nauheim, Germany—several years ago; the time that the cholera broke out at Hamburg. We talked of the people we had known there, or had casually met; and G. said: “Do you remember my introducing you to an earl—the Earl of C
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CHAPTER XXI.
CHAPTER XXI.
Man will do many things to get himself loved, he will do all things to get himself envied. —Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar. Before I saw Australia I had never heard of the “weet-weet” at all. I met but few men who had seen it thrown—at least I met but few who mentioned having seen it thrown. Roughly described, it is a fat wooden cigar with its butt-end fastened to a flexible twig. The whole thing is only a couple of feet long, and weighs less than two ounces. This feather—so to call it—is not
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CHAPTER XXII.
CHAPTER XXII.
Nothing is so ignorant as a man’s left hand, except a lady’s watch. —Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar. You notice that Mrs. Praed knows her art. She can place a thing before you so that you can see it. She is not alone in that. Australia is fertile in writers whose books are faithful mirrors of the life of the country and of its history. The materials were surprisingly rich, both in quality and in mass, and Marcus Clarke, Raolph Boldrewood, Gordon, Kendall, and the others, have built out of them
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CHAPTER XXIII.
CHAPTER XXIII.
Be careless in your dress if you must, but keep a tidy soul. —Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar. We left Adelaide in due course, and went to Horsham, in the colony of Victoria; a good deal of a journey, if I remember rightly, but pleasant. Horsham sits in a plain which is as level as a floor—one of those famous dead levels which Australian books describe so often; gray, bare, sombre, melancholy, baked, cracked, in the tedious long drouths, but a horizonless ocean of vivid green grass the day afte
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CHAPTER XXIV.
CHAPTER XXIV.
There is no such thing as “the Queen’s English.” The property has gone into the hands of a joint stock company and we own the bulk of the shares! —Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar. Frequently, in Australia, one has cloud-effects of an unfamiliar sort. We had this kind of scenery, finely staged, all the way to Ballarat. Consequently we saw more sky than country on that journey. At one time a great stretch of the vault was densely flecked with wee ragged-edged flakes of painfully white cloud-stuff
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CHAPTER XXV.
CHAPTER XXV.
“Classic.” A book which people praise and don’t read. —Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar. On the rail again—bound for Bendigo. From diary: October 23. Got up at 6, left at 7.30; soon reached Castlemaine, one of the rich gold-fields of the early days; waited several hours for a train; left at 3.40 and reached Bendigo in an hour. For comrade, a Catholic priest who was better than I was, but didn’t seem to know it—a man full of graces of the heart, the mind, and the spirit; a lovable man. He will ri
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CHAPTER XXVI.
CHAPTER XXVI.
There are people who can do all fine and heroic things but one! keep from telling their happinesses to the unhappy. —Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar. After visits to Maryborough and some other Australian towns, we presently took passage for New Zealand. If it would not look too much like showing off, I would tell the reader where New Zealand is; for he is as I was; he thinks he knows. And he thinks he knows where Hertzegovina is; and how to pronounce pariah; and how to use the word unique witho
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CHAPTER XXVII.
CHAPTER XXVII.
Man is the Only Animal that Blushes. Or needs to. —Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar. The universal brotherhood of man is our most precious possession, what there is of it. FROM DIARY: November 1—noon. A fine day, a brilliant sun. Warm in the sun, cold in the shade—an icy breeze blowing out of the south. A solemn long swell rolling up northward. It comes from the South Pole, with nothing in the way to obstruct its march and tone its energy down. I have read somewhere that an acute observer among
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CHAPTER XXVIII.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed. —Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar. The aphorism does really seem true: “Given the Circumstances, the Man will appear.” But the man musn’t appear ahead of time, or it will spoil everything. In Robinson’s case the Moment had been approaching for a quarter of a century—and meantime the future Conciliator was tranquilly laying bricks in Hobart. When all other means had failed, the Moment had arrived, and the Bricklayer
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CHAPTER XXVIX.
CHAPTER XXVIX.
When people do not respect us we are sharply offended; yet deep down in his private heart no man much respects himself. —Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar. Necessarily, the human interest is the first interest in the log-book of any country. The annals of Tasmania, in whose shadow we were sailing, are lurid with that feature. Tasmania was a convict-dump, in old times; this has been indicated in the account of the Conciliator, where reference is made to vain attempts of desperate convicts to win t
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CHAPTER XXX.
CHAPTER XXX.
Nature makes the locust with an appetite for crops; man would have made him with an appetite for sand. —Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar. We spent part of an afternoon and a night at sea, and reached Bluff, in New Zealand, early in the morning. Bluff is at the bottom of the middle island, and is away down south, nearly forty-seven degrees below the equator. It lies as far south of the line as Quebec lies north of it, and the climates of the two should be alike; but for some reason or other it ha
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CHAPTER XXXI.
CHAPTER XXXI.
The spirit of wrath—not the words—is the sin; and the spirit of wrath is cursing. We begin to swear before we can talk. —Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar. November 11. On the road. This train-express goes twenty and one-half miles an hour, schedule time; but it is fast enough, the outlook upon sea and land is so interesting, and the cars so comfortable. They are not English, and not American; they are the Swiss combination of the two. A narrow and railed porch along the side, where a person can
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CHAPTER XXXII.
CHAPTER XXXII.
The man with a new idea is a Crank until the idea succeeds. —Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar. It was Junior England all the way to Christchurch—in fact, just a garden. And Christchurch is an English town, with an English-park annex, and a winding English brook just like the Avon—and named the Avon; but from a man, not from Shakespeare’s river. Its grassy banks are bordered by the stateliest and most impressive weeping willows to be found in the world, I suppose. They continue the line of a grea
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CHAPTER XXXIII.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
Let us be grateful to Adam our benefactor. He cut us out of the “blessing of idleness,” and won for us the “curse of labor.” —Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar. We soon reached the town of Nelson, and spent the most of the day there, visiting acquaintances and driving with them about the garden—the whole region is a garden, excepting the scene of the “Maungatapu Murders,” of thirty years ago. That is a wild place—wild and lonely; an ideal place for a murder. It is at the base of a vast, rugged, d
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XXXIV.
XXXIV.
Let us not be too particular. It is better to have old second-hand diamonds than none at all. —Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar. November 27. To-day we reached Gisborne, and anchored in a big bay; there was a heavy sea on, so we remained on board. We were a mile from shore; a little steam-tug put out from the land; she was an object of thrilling interest; she would climb to the summit of a billow, reel drunkenly there a moment, dim and gray in the driving storm of spindrift, then make a plunge l
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CHAPTER XXXV.
CHAPTER XXXV.
The Autocrat of Russia possesses more power than any other man in the earth; but he cannot stop a sneeze. —Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar. WAUGANUI, December 3. A pleasant trip, yesterday, per Ballarat Fly. Four hours. I do not know the distance, but it must have been well along toward fifty miles. The Fly could have spun it out to eight hours and not discommoded me; for where there is comfort, and no need for hurry, speed is of no value—at least to me; and nothing that goes on wheels can be m
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CHAPTER XXXVI.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
There are several good protections against temptations, but the surest is cowardice. —Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar. Names are not always what they seem. The common Welsh name Bzjxxllwep is pronounced Jackson. Friday, December 13. Sailed, at 3 p.m., in the ‘Mararoa’. Summer seas and a good ship—life has nothing better. Monday. Three days of paradise. Warm and sunny and smooth; the sea a luminous Mediterranean blue . . . . One lolls in a long chair all day under deck-awnings, and reads and smo
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CHAPTER XXXVII.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
To succeed in the other trades, capacity must be shown; in the law, concealment of it will do. —Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar. MONDAY,—December 23, 1895. Sailed from Sydney for Ceylon in the P. & O. steamer ‘Oceana’. A Lascar crew mans this ship—the first I have seen. White cotton petticoat and pants; barefoot; red shawl for belt; straw cap, brimless, on head, with red scarf wound around it; complexion a rich dark brown; short straight black hair; whiskers fine and silky; lustrous and
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CHAPTER XXXVIII.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
Prosperity is the best protector of principle. —Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar. EVENING—14th. Sailed in the Rosetta. This is a poor old ship, and ought to be insured and sunk. As in the ‘Oceana’, just so here: everybody dresses for dinner; they make it a sort of pious duty. These fine and formal costumes are a rather conspicuous contrast to the poverty and shabbiness of the surroundings . . . . If you want a slice of a lime at four o’clock tea, you must sign an order on the bar. Limes cost 14
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CHAPTER XXXIX.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
By trying we can easily learn to endure adversity. Another man’s, I mean. —Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar. You soon find your long-ago dreams of India rising in a sort of vague and luscious moonlight above the horizon-rim of your opaque consciousness, and softly lighting up a thousand forgotten details which were parts of a vision that had once been vivid to you when you were a boy, and steeped your spirit in tales of the East. The barbaric gorgeousnesses, for instance; and the princely titles
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CHAPTER XL.
CHAPTER XL.
Few of us can stand prosperity. Another man’s, I mean. —Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar. The next picture in my mind is Government House, on Malabar Point, with the wide sea-view from the windows and broad balconies; abode of His Excellency the Governor of the Bombay Presidency—a residence which is European in everything but the native guards and servants, and is a home and a palace of state harmoniously combined. That was England, the English power, the English civilization, the modern civiliz
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CHAPTER XLI.
CHAPTER XLI.
There is an old-time toast which is golden for its beauty. “When you ascend the hill of prosperity may you not meet a friend.” —Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar. The next picture that drifts across the field of my memory is one which is connected with religious things. We were taken by friends to see a Jain temple. It was small, and had many flags or streamers flying from poles standing above its roof; and its little battlements supported a great many small idols or images. Upstairs, inside, a s
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CHAPTER XLII.
CHAPTER XLII.
Each person is born to one possession which outvalues all his others—his last breath. —Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar. Toward midnight, that night, there was another function. This was a Hindoo wedding—no, I think it was a betrothal ceremony. Always before, we had driven through streets that were multitudinous and tumultuous with picturesque native life, but now there was nothing of that. We seemed to move through a city of the dead. There was hardly a suggestion of life in those still and vac
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CHAPTER XLIII.
CHAPTER XLIII.
Hunger is the handmaid of genius —Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar. One day during our stay in Bombay there was a criminal trial of a most interesting sort, a terribly realistic chapter out of the “Arabian Nights,” a strange mixture of simplicities and pieties and murderous practicalities, which brought back the forgotten days of Thuggee and made them live again; in fact, even made them believable. It was a case where a young girl had been assassinated for the sake of her trifling ornaments, thi
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CHAPTER XLIV.
CHAPTER XLIV.
The old saw says, “Let a sleeping dog lie.” Right.... Still, when there is much at stake it is better to get a newspaper to do it. —Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar. FROM DIARY: January 28. I learned of an official Thug-book the other day. I was not aware before that there was such a thing. I am allowed the temporary use of it. We are making preparations for travel. Mainly the preparations are purchases of bedding. This is to be used in sleeping berths in the trains; in private houses sometimes;
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CHAPTER XLV.
CHAPTER XLV.
It takes your enemy and your friend, working together, to hurt you to the heart; the one to slander you and the other to get the news to you. —Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar. Out of the town again; a long drive through open country, by winding roads among secluded villages nestling in the inviting shade of tropic vegetation, a Sabbath stillness everywhere, sometimes a pervading sense of solitude, but always barefoot natives gliding by like spirits, without sound of footfall, and others in the
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CHAPTER XLVI.
CHAPTER XLVI.
If the desire to kill and the opportunity to kill came always together, who would escape hanging. —Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar. On the Train. Fifty years ago, when I was a boy in the then remote and sparsely peopled Mississippi valley, vague tales and rumors of a mysterious body of professional murderers came wandering in from a country which was constructively as far from us as the constellations blinking in space—India; vague tales and rumors of a sect called Thugs, who waylaid travelers
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CHAPTER XLVII.
CHAPTER XLVII.
Simple rules for saving money: To save half, when you are fired by an eager impulse to contribute to a charity, wait, and count forty. To save three-quarters, count sixty. To save it all, count sixty-five. —Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar. The Thug said: “How many of you English are passionately devoted to sporting! Your days and months are passed in its excitement. A tiger, a panther, a buffalo or a hog rouses your utmost energies for its destruction—you even risk your lives in its pursuit. Ho
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CHAPTER XLVIII.
CHAPTER XLVIII.
Grief can take care of itself; but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with. —Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar. We left Bombay for Allahabad by a night train. It is the custom of the country to avoid day travel when it can conveniently be done. But there is one trouble: while you can seemingly “secure” the two lower berths by making early application, there is no ticket as witness of it, and no other producible evidence in case your proprietorship shall chance to b
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CHAPTER XLIX.
CHAPTER XLIX.
He had had much experience of physicians, and said “the only way to keep your health is to eat what you don’t want, drink what you don’t like, and do what you’d druther not.” —Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar. It was a long journey—two nights, one day, and part of another day, from Bombay eastward to Allahabad; but it was always interesting, and it was not fatiguing. At first the night travel promised to be fatiguing, but that was on account of pyjamas. This foolish night-dress consists of jacke
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CHAPTER L.
CHAPTER L.
The man who is ostentatious of his modesty is twin to the statue that wears a fig-leaf. —Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar. The journey to Benares was all in daylight, and occupied but a few hours. It was admirably dusty. The dust settled upon you in a thick ashy layer and turned you into a fakeer, with nothing lacking to the role but the cow manure and the sense of holiness. There was a change of cars about mid-afternoon at Moghul-serai—if that was the name—and a wait of two hours there for the
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CHAPTER LI.
CHAPTER LI.
Let me make the superstitions of a nation and I care not who makes its laws or its songs either. —Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar. Yes, the city of Benares is in effect just a big church, a religious hive, whose every cell is a temple, a shrine or a mosque, and whose every conceivable earthly and heavenly good is procurable under one roof, so to speak—a sort of Army and Navy Stores, theologically stocked. I will make out a little itinerary for the pilgrim; then you will see how handy the system
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CHAPTER LII.
CHAPTER LII.
Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been. —Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar. In one of those Benares temples we saw a devotee working for salvation in a curious way. He had a huge wad of clay beside him and was making it up into little wee gods no bigger than carpet tacks. He stuck a grain of rice into each—to represent the lingam, I think. He turned them out nimbly, for he had had long practice and had acquired great facility. Every day he made 2,000 gods, then threw them into the
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CHAPTER LIII.
CHAPTER LIII.
True irreverence is disrespect for another man’s god. —Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar. It was in Benares that I saw another living god. That makes two. I believe I have seen most of the greater and lesser wonders of the world, but I do not remember that any of them interested me so overwhelmingly as did that pair of gods. When I try to account for this effect I find no difficulty about it. I find that, as a rule, when a thing is a wonder to us it is not because of what we see in it, but becaus
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CHAPTER LIV.
CHAPTER LIV.
Do not undervalue the headache. While it is at its sharpest it seems a bad investment; but when relief begins, the unexpired remainder is worth $4 a minute. —Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar. A comfortable railway journey of seventeen and a half hours brought us to the capital of India, which is likewise the capital of Bengal—Calcutta. Like Bombay, it has a population of nearly a million natives and a small gathering of white people. It is a huge city and fine, and is called the City of Palaces.
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CHAPTER LV.
CHAPTER LV.
There are 869 different forms of lying, but only one of them has been squarely forbidden. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor. —Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar. FROM DIARY: February 14. We left at 4:30 P.M. Until dark we moved through rich vegetation, then changed to a boat and crossed the Ganges. February 15. Up with the sun. A brilliant morning, and frosty. A double suit of flannels is found necessary. The plain is perfectly level, and seems to stretch away and away and awa
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CHAPTER LVI.
CHAPTER LVI.
There are two times in a man’s life when he should not speculate: when he can’t afford it, and when he can. —Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar. On Monday and Tuesday at sunrise we again had fair-to-middling views of the stupendous mountains; then, being well cooled off and refreshed, we were ready to chance the weather of the lower world once more. We traveled up hill by the regular train five miles to the summit, then changed to a little canvas-canopied hand-car for the 35-mile descent. It was t
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CHAPTER LVII.
CHAPTER LVII.
She was not quite what you would call refined. She was not quite what you would call unrefined. She was the kind of person that keeps a parrot. —Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar. So far as I am able to judge, nothing has been left undone, either by man or Nature, to make India the most extraordinary country that the sun visits on his round. Nothing seems to have been forgotten, nothing over looked. Always, when you think you have come to the end of her tremendous specialties and have finished ha
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CHAPTER LVIII.
CHAPTER LVIII.
Make it a point to do something every day that you don’t want to do. This is the golden rule for acquiring the habit of doing your duty without pain. —Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar. It seems to be settled, now, that among the many causes from which the Great Mutiny sprang, the main one was the annexation of the kingdom of Oudh by the East India Company—characterized by Sir Henry Lawrence as “the most unrighteous act that was ever committed.” In the spring of 1857, a mutinous spirit was observ
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CHAPTER LIX.
CHAPTER LIX.
Don’t part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist but you have ceased to live. —Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar. Often, the surest way to convey misinformation is to tell the strict truth. We were driven over Sir Colin Campbell’s route by a British officer, and when I arrived at the Residency I was so familiar with the road that I could have led a retreat over it myself; but the compass in my head has been out of order from my birth, and so, as soon as I was within the batt
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CHAPTER LX.
CHAPTER LX.
SATAN (impatiently) to NEW-COMER. The trouble with you Chicago people is, that you think you are the best people down here; whereas you are merely the most numerous. —Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar. We wandered contentedly around here and there in India; to Lahore, among other places, where the Lieutenant-Governor lent me an elephant. This hospitality stands out in my experiences in a stately isolation. It was a fine elephant, affable, gentlemanly, educated, and I was not afraid of it. I even
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CHAPTER LXI.
CHAPTER LXI.
In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then He made School Boards. —Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar. Suppose we applied no more ingenuity to the instruction of deaf and dumb and blind children than we sometimes apply in our American public schools to the instruction of children who are in possession of all their faculties? The result would be that the deaf and dumb and blind would acquire nothing. They would live and die as ignorant as bricks and stones. The methods used in
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CHAPTER LXII.
CHAPTER LXII.
There are no people who are quite so vulgar as the over-refined ones. —Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar. We sailed from Calcutta toward the end of March; stopped a day at Madras; two or three days in Ceylon; then sailed westward on a long flight for Mauritius. From my diary: April 7. We are far abroad upon the smooth waters of the Indian Ocean, now; it is shady and pleasant and peaceful under the vast spread of the awnings, and life is perfect again—ideal. The difference between a river and the
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CHAPTER LXIII.
CHAPTER LXIII.
The principal difference between a cat and a lie is that the cat has only nine lives. —Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar. April 20.—The cyclone of 1892 killed and crippled hundreds of people; it was accompanied by a deluge of rain, which drowned Port Louis and produced a water famine. Quite true; for it burst the reservoir and the water-pipes; and for a time after the flood had disappeared there was much distress from want of water. This is the only place in the world where no breed of matches ca
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CHAPTER LXIV.
CHAPTER LXIV.
When your watch gets out of order you have choice of two things to do: throw it in the fire or take it to the watch-tinker. The former is the quickest. —Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar. The Arundel Castle is the finest boat I have seen in these seas. She is thoroughly modern, and that statement covers a great deal of ground. She has the usual defect, the common defect, the universal defect, the defect that has never been missing from any ship that ever sailed—she has imperfect beds. Many ships
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CHAPTER LXV.
CHAPTER LXV.
In statesmanship get the formalities right, never mind about the moralities. —Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar. FROM DIARY: Royal Hotel. Comfortable, good table, good service of natives and Madrasis. Curious jumble of modern and ancient city and village, primitiveness and the other thing. Electric bells, but they don’t ring. Asked why they didn’t, the watchman in the office said he thought they must be out of order; he thought so because some of them rang, but most of them didn’t. Wouldn’t it be
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CHAPTER LXVI.
CHAPTER LXVI.
Every one is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody. —Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar. When I scribbled in my note-book a year ago the paragraph which ends the preceding chapter, it was meant to indicate, in an extravagant form, two things: the conflicting nature of the information conveyed by the citizen to the stranger concerning South African politics, and the resulting confusion created in the stranger’s mind thereby. But it does not seem so very extravagant now. Nothin
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CHAPTER LXVII.
CHAPTER LXVII.
First catch your Boer, then kick him. —Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar. Those latter days were days of bitter worry and trouble for the harassed Reformers. From Mrs. Hammond we learn that on the 31st (the day after Johannesburg heard of the invasion), “The Reform Committee repudiates Dr. Jameson’s inroad.” It also publishes its intention to adhere to the Manifesto. It also earnestly desires that the inhabitants shall refrain from overt acts against the Boer government. It also “distributes arms
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CHAPTER LXVIII.
CHAPTER LXVIII.
None of us can have as many virtues as the fountain-pen, or half its cussedness; but we can try. —Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar. The Duke of Fife has borne testimony that Mr. Rhodes deceived him. That is also what Mr. Rhodes did with the Reformers. He got them into trouble, and then stayed out himself. A judicious man. He has always been that. As to this there was a moment of doubt, once. It was when he was out on his last pirating expedition in the Matabele country. The cable shouted out tha
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CHAPTER LXIX.
CHAPTER LXIX.
The very ink with which all history is written is merely fluid prejudice. —Pudd’nhead Wilsons’s New Calendar There isn’t a Parallel of Latitude but thinks it would have been the Equator if it had had its rights. —Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar. Next to Mr. Rhodes, to me the most interesting convulsion of nature in South Africa was the diamond-crater. The Rand gold fields are a stupendous marvel, and they make all other gold fields small, but I was not a stranger to gold-mining; the veldt was a
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CONCLUSION.
CONCLUSION.
I have traveled more than anyone else, and I have noticed that even the angels speak English with an accent. —Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar. I saw Table Rock, anyway—a majestic pile. It is 3,000 feet high. It is also 17,000 feet high. These figures may be relied upon. I got them in Cape Town from the two best-informed citizens, men who had made Table Rock the study of their lives. And I saw Table Bay, so named for its levelness. I saw the Castle—built by the Dutch East India Company three hun
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