Page:Boys Life of Mark Twain.djvu/193

 XXVII T was early in May—the 6th—that Mark Twain had delivered his Cooper Union lecture, and a month later, June 8, 1867, he sailed on the Quaker City, with some sixty-six other "pilgrims," on the great Holy Land excursion, the story of which has been so fully and faithfully told in The Innocents Abroad. What a wonderful thing it must have seemed in that time for a party of excursionists to have a ship all to themselves to go a-gipsying in from port to port of antiquity and romance! The advertised celebrities did not go, none of them but Mark Twain, but no one minded, presently, for Mark Twain's sayings and stories kept the company sufficiently entertained, and sometimes he would read aloud to his fellow-passengers from the newspaper letters he was writing, and invite comment and criticism. That was entertainment for them, and it was good for him, for it gave him an immediate audience, always inspiring to an author. Furthermore, the comments offered were often of the greatest value, especially suggestions from one Mrs. Fairbanks, of Cleveland, a middle-aged, cultured woman, herself a 163