We can not forget Florence—Naples—nor the foretaste of heaven that is in the delicious atmosphere of Greece—and surely not Athens and the broken temples of the Acropolis. Surely not venerable Rome—nor the green plain that compasses her round about, contrasting its brightness with her gray decay—nor the ruined arches that stand apart in the plain and clothe their looped and windowed raggedness with vines. We shall remember St. Peter’s: not as one sees it when he walks the streets of Rome and fancies all her domes are just alike, but as he sees it leagues away, when every meaner edifice has faded out of sight and that one dome looms superbly up in the flush of sunset, full of dignity and grace, strongly outlined as a mountain.
We shall remember Constantinople and the Bosporus—the colossal magnificence of Baalbec—the Pyramids of Egypt—the prodigious form, the benignant countenance of the Sphynx—Oriental Smyrna—sacred Jerusalem—Damascus, the “Pearl of the East,” the pride of Syria, the fabled Garden of Eden, the home of princes and genii of The Arabian Nights, the oldest metropolis on earth, the one city in all the world that has kept its name and held its place and looked serenely on while the Kingdoms and Empires of four thousand years have risen to life, enjoyed their little season of pride and pomp, and then vanished and been forgotten!
Endnotes
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They go on the principle that it is better than one innocent man should suffer than five hundred. ↩
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July, 1867. ↩
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Colonel J. Heron Foster, editor of a Pittsburgh journal, and a most estimable gentleman. As these sheets are being prepared for the press I am pained to learn of his decease shortly after his return home. —M. T. ↩
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The italics are mine. —M. T. ↩
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Quotation from the Pilgrims. ↩
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Excuse the slang, no other word will describe it. ↩
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The railroad has been completed since the above was written. ↩
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I measure all lakes by Tahoe, partly because I am far more familiar with it than with any other, and partly because I have such a high admiration for it and such a world of pleasant recollections of it, that it is very nearly impossible for me to speak of lakes and not mention it. ↩
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“A Koorbash is Arabic for cowhide, the cow being a rhinoceros. It is the most cruel whip known to fame. Heavy as lead, and flexible as India-rubber, usually about forty inches long and tapering gradually from an inch in diameter to a point, it administers a blow which leaves its mark for time.”
—Scow Life in Egypt, by the same author -
The thought is Mr. Prime’s, not mine, and is full of good sense. I borrowed it from his Tent Life. —M. T. ↩
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A pilgrim informs me that it was not David and Goliath, but David and Saul. I stick to my own statement—the guide told me, and he ought to know. ↩
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Favorite pilgrim expression. ↩
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It was an unselfish act of benevolence; it was done without any ostentation, and has never been mentioned in any newspaper, I think. Therefore it is refreshing to learn now, several months after the above narrative was written, that another man received all the credit of this rescue of the colonists. Such is life. ↩
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Stated to me for a fact. I only tell it as I got it. I am willing to believe it. I can believe anything. ↩
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Afterwards presented to the Central Park. ↩
Colophon
The Innocents Abroad
was published in 1869 by
Mark Twain.
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