American Vandal Part 4

"The long journeys in poorly lighted, porrly ventilated, and poorly heated coaches, together with frequent poor rail connections and hotel accomodations exhausted him.  By January 14 he acknowledged to his sister Pamela that the pace of the lecture circuit was a hard one and that he wsas 'getting awfully tired of it.'  It constitutes the first record of Mark Twain's disenchantment with tour lecturing,..."  (Lorch pg 95)

American Vandal Part 2

"The engagements in December numbered only about eight [ten] and were geographically spotty, ..."   The first leg Twain traveled was to Rondout aboard the Hudson River railroad - 85 miles.  The tour included engagements in  Rondout, New York; Newark, New Jersey; Norwich, New York; Scranton, Pennsylvania; Fort Plain, New York; Detroit, Michigan; Lansing, Michigan;  Charlotte, Michigan; Tecumseh, Michigan;  and, Akron, Ohio; 

American Vandal Part 1

Arriving in New York July 29, 1868, Sam took rooms at the Westminster Hotel to work on the manuscript for Innocents Abroad. But his primary concern during the weeks that followed were the courtship of Olivia Langdon of Elmira, New York, and the growing necessity of replenishing his rapidly diminishing funds.

Departing Egypt

We were glad to have seen the land which was the mother of civilization—which taught Greece her letters, and through Greece Rome, and through Rome the world; the land which could have humanized and civilized the hapless children of Israel, but allowed them to depart out of her borders little better than savages. We were glad to have seen that land which had an enlightened religion with future eternal rewards and punishment in it, while even Israel’s religion contained no promise of a hereafter.

The Sphinx

After years of waiting, it was before me at last. The great face was so sad, so earnest, so longing, so patient. There was a dignity not of earth in its mien, and in its countenance a benignity such as never any thing human wore. It was stone, but it seemed sentient. If ever image of stone thought, it was thinking. It was looking toward the verge of the landscape, yet looking at nothing—nothing but distance and vacancy. It was looking over and beyond every thing of the present, and far into the past.

The Great Pyramid of Cheops

At the distance of a few miles the Pyramids rising above the palms, looked very clean-cut, very grand and imposing, and very soft and filmy, as well. They swam in a rich haze that took from them all suggestions of unfeeling stone, and made them seem only the airy nothings of a dream—structures which might blossom into tiers of vague arches, or ornate colonnades, may be, and change and change again, into all graceful forms of architecture, while we looked, and then melt deliciously away and blend with the tremulous atmosphere.

The Nile

NilometerOn the island at our right was the machine they call the Nilometer, a stone-column whose business it is to mark the rise of the river and prophecy whether it will reach only thirty-two feet and produce a famine, or whether it will properly flood the land at forty and produce plenty, or whether it will rise to forty-three and bring death and destruction to flocks and crops—but how it

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