[The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain]@TWC D-Link bookThe Innocents Abroad CHAPTER I 11/11
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? .
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