One night the Chlapowskis and their guests were discussing America and the coming Centennial Exposition at Philadelphia. At first in jest, a general emigration to America was suggested. They would have there an ideal community, a care-free natural life far removed from Russian oppression, and Pani Helena[56] could have her much needed rest. The idea took root. The would-be emigrants were thought foolish by most of their friends, but Henryk Sienkiewicz (afterwards the famous author of _Quo Vadis?_), Count Chlapowski himself, his friends Jules Sypniewski and Lucian Paprocki, were all soon in deadly earnest. California they had heard of as an earthly paradise, where life was idyllic and the earth yielded up not only an easily won living, but fortune. The suddenly achieved result was that Sienkiewicz sailed for America in a few months, and the others arranged to follow. Modjeska obtained leave of absence from the president of the theatre, who cheerfully expected her to come back, but fixed a forfeit of six thousand roubles if she did not. In June, 1876, she appeared in Warsaw for the last time. There was a great popular demonstration. The house was crowded and to the highest degree enthusiastic. After the performance the audience formed a double rank to the gates of the theatre grounds and shouted their farewells and praises. The public, at least, was with her to the last.[57] In July, 1876, she sailed from Bremen for New York, with Count Chlapowski, her son Rudolphe, Jules Sypniewski, his wife and two children, and Lucian Paprocki,--a strange band of pilgrims, artists with little but their ideals and comradeship to fit them for pioneering in a strange country, headed by a woman who was giving up a career of _grande dame_ and _première artiste_ for the prospect of life on a farm eight thousand miles or so from the scene of her triumphs! Modjeska had never seen the ocean, and the voyage of thirteen days was invigorating. Her party spent about a month in New York, making excursions to Philadelphia to see the exposition, where she admired the vegetables and fruits from California, experimented with those dainties new to her, pop-corn and peanuts, and found them tasteless, and visited the art exhibits. New York of 1876 she thought a “monstrous, untidy bazaar.” In August they started for California, taking ship for Panama. She found charming her first glimpse of the tropics, during the railroad trip across the Isthmus, and the three weeks’ voyage on the Pacific went far to restore her vigor and peace of mind.