Following the Equator: A Journey Around the WorldTwain, Mark
General
Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World
Twain, Mark
Equator -- Description and travel; Twain, Mark, 1835-1910 -- Travel; Voyages around the world
“Wait—there's more. Leave that American out of the account and see what
would happen. There's nobody on hand to examine your ticket when you
arrive. But the conductor will come and examine it when the train is
ready to start. It is too late to buy your extra ticket now; the train
can't wait, and won't. You must climb out.”
“But can't I pay the conductor?”
“No, he is not authorized to receive the money, and he won't. You must
climb out. There's no other way. I tell you, the railway management is
about the only thoroughly European thing here—continentally European I
mean, not English. It's the continental business in perfection; down
fine. Oh, yes, even to the peanut-commerce of weighing baggage.”
The train slowed up at his place. As he stepped out he said:
“Yes, you'll like Maryborough. Plenty of intelligence there. It's a
charming place—with a hell of a hotel.”
Then he was gone. I turned to the other gentleman:
“Is your friend in the ministry?”
“No—studying for it.”
CHAPTER XXXII.
The man with a new idea is a Crank until the idea succeeds.
—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
It was Junior England all the way to Christchurch—in fact, just a
garden. And Christchurch is an English town, with an English-park annex,
and a winding English brook just like the Avon—and named the Avon; but
from a man, not from Shakespeare's river. Its grassy banks are bordered
by the stateliest and most impressive weeping willows to be found in the
world, I suppose. They continue the line of a great ancestor; they were
grown from sprouts of the willow that sheltered Napoleon's grave in St.
Helena. It is a settled old community, with all the serenities, the
graces, the conveniences, and the comforts of the ideal home-life. If it
had an established Church and social inequality it would be England over
again with hardly a lack.
In the museum we saw many curious and interesting things; among others a
fine native house of the olden time, with all the details true to the
facts, and the showy colors right and in their proper places. All the
details: the fine mats and rugs and things; the elaborate and wonderful
wood carvings—wonderful, surely, considering who did them—wonderful in
design and particularly in execution, for they were done with admirable
sharpness and exactness, and yet with no better tools than flint and jade
and shell could furnish; and the totem-posts were there, ancestor above
ancestor, with tongues protruded and hands clasped comfortably over
bellies containing other people's ancestors—grotesque and ugly devils,
every one, but lovingly carved, and ably; and the stuffed natives were
present, in their proper places, and looking as natural as life; and the
housekeeping utensils were there, too, and close at hand the carved and
finely ornamented war canoe.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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