[The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain]@TWC D-Link bookThe Innocents Abroad CHAPTER VII 13/22
We rather like him.
We can tolerate the Oracle very easily, but we have a poet and a good-natured enterprising idiot on board, and they do distress the company.
The one gives copies of his verses to consuls, commanders, hotel keepers, Arabs, Dutch--to anybody, in fact, who will submit to a grievous infliction most kindly meant.
His poetry is all very well on shipboard, notwithstanding when he wrote an "Ode to the Ocean in a Storm" in one half hour, and an "Apostrophe to the Rooster in the Waist of the Ship" in the next, the transition was considered to be rather abrupt; but when he sends an invoice of rhymes to the Governor of Fayal and another to the commander in chief and other dignitaries in Gibraltar with the compliments of the Laureate of the Ship, it is not popular with the passengers. The other personage I have mentioned is young and green, and not bright, not learned, and not wise.
He will be, though, someday if he recollects the answers to all his questions.
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