Act. I—Scene I.

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Capt. Dusenberry’s Office in Wall street.

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{Enter six old maids, in obsolete costumes, & a dozen veterans of both sexes in all stages of sickness, mutilation & dilapidation.} with cats, parrots, poodles, &c.

1st Maid—(D With youthful diffidence)—Good morning sir—is this the office of the Grand Pleasure Excursion all over the h Habitable Globe & the Holy Land in Five Months?

Capt.—It is Madam—or Miss, no doubt, judging by appearances. —pray be seated. James (to the clerk)—bring chairs—be seated, ladies & gentlemen.

1st Maid—We have seen by the published programme, that none but persons of the highest respectability & the most stainless morality—

Capt—You will be safe ladies, I assure you that you need not have any fears if you go with us, of the snares of designing men. Aside—Your faces are security for that, anyway.

1st M—We are very, very glad to you hear you say that. It lifts a load of apprehension from our hearts. And we see, also, that Mr. Beecher is going with you—is that true?

E Capt—Entirely so.

M—Oh, Joy!— And Gen. Sherman?

Capt—Yes—

M—And the Drummer Boy & Maggie Mitchell?1explanatory note

Capt—Both.

M—Rapture!—what a delightful variety!—And it is printed published in the programme that the $1250 fare must be paid in advance & the recommendations of all applicants for passage submitted to the Committee on Credentials. We have brought our money (they pass it in), & some letters endorsing our characters (they hand over a voluminous mass of Manuscripts) & now Captain, if we should be so fortunate & as to meet with favor in the eyes of the Committee,—

Capt (pretending to glance over the recommendations)—No danger in the world, my dear Miss—encomiums like these could never be slighted by any committee.

M—You see, we are poor unprotected young things—

All Maids—Silly unsophisticated creatures—

M—Just of an age to fall into the pitfalls that line the path of thoughtless youth—

All—Gay, & foolish & giddy—

1st M—Just in that budding spring of life when b innocence & beauty are too apt to prove false beacons the sources of bitterest sorrow to their possessors—

All—Sad, sad lop lot—(snuffling)

1st M—And—and—Will you—will you be our dear guardian & friend & shield us from harm with your manly breast? Speak!

All.—Oh, be our guardian angel!

Capt.—This hand shall defend you from all peril—this breast shall shield you—this heart shall be your refuge! All the ship’s company shall know my fatherly care, but you unto you I will be father, mother, brother, uncle, sister-in-law {Excuse these tears}

All—Heaven bless you, sire! {Exit.}

Capt D—{Aside}—Got Well, a few more old cats like that would make a unique excursion of it, I should say.} {To the others.}—Ah, ladies & gentlemen—

1st Cripple—Wher do you stop at first, Capt?

Capt—At the Azores.

1 Cr—Is that a tribe, or is it a mountain? or something?

Cap—Oh—neither. It is a group of islands.

1 Cr—Jes so—jes so. Where next?

Cap—At Gibraltar.

Cr—Tribe? Or maybe—maybe, mountain?

Cap (Cursed old fool)—No, Oh, no—kind of a mountain—great rock on a peninsula of Southern Spain.

Cr—That’s good. That’s powerful good. Wher next?

Cap—Marseilles.

1 Cr.—I-yi—where they make the white vests & sing March on march on ye brave, the e◇ ’venging sword unsheath & so on. That’s very good. Marseilles—that’s very good—only place in Ireland that’s worth a d—n.

Cap—I should be glad to converse with you at some length, Mr—Mr.—but time for I perceive that you are of an observing turn of mind & endowed with a fund of entertaining interesting information which cannot fail to make your conversation entertaining to such any man in the world who—who—would be likely—to be entertained by it—{No—no—no thanks}—but time presses, &—did you wish to say anything in particular.

1 Cr—Nothing, only here is my money

The Others—And mine—

1 Cr—And my recommendations—

The Others—And mine, also—

1 Cr—And I guess we’re all in the same boat together—at least-ways; we want to be.
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{They pass the compliments, & exit.}

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Capt—(Throwing the stacks of recommendations in the fire)—Committee on Credentials! Humph! Twelve Hundred & Fifty Dollars is the Committee on Credentials—paid!—(ironically)—well, I guess you’ll all pass the Committee without running aground. And here’s another stack of recommendations come by mail from Arkansas, & Jersey & other out of the way places. Let’s see what they say. {Reads.}

Whangwang, Minn. Jan 67.

Dr Capt &c

“This is to certify that I we have known the inclosed Deacon Pendergrass for 62 year, & always found him a stunner at awakenins, & hark from the tomb! when it comes to giving in “experience.” A square man & fre not knowing of his own gifts.

Jno Smith—Jno W. Smith

Jno. H. Smith—Jno Peter Smith &c &

$1250 Enclosed.

Cap—Pendergrass will do.

Reads—

This is to signify that the within named Jno Butterfield has retired from business and does not keep corner grocery any more. The He has the soap. He comes from the first families of this place & his uncle has been post master once & his grandfather was a Home Guard in the Revolutionary war. He knowed the nigger that was body-servant servant to Genℓ. Washington. Notwithstanding that that nigger in a bogus form keeps turning up every year & c dying in the newspapers & at the most cussedest unearthly ages that a ever even Methusalem heard of, but not genuine & not to be relied on. He is 57 years old—Butterfield, not the nigger—& is poorly as to health, but a fair eater. handy with a knife & fork.

Jno Jones, J. B.

Jones, Wm H.

Jones, Geore Wash-

ington Jones &c.

$1250 enclosed.}

Cap—D—Well, I suppose this dazzling acquisition must be added to the ships list, too. The last recommendation is a good one.

Rondout, N.Y. Jan &c

The young gentleman whose b sends a note w father sends a note with this requesting that his name may be placed before your Com. of on Credentials, is of stainless reputation & unimpea exalted principles. He is a graduate of Yale College, & although he will necessarily have to remain in the the modest & retiring position proper to him in the midst of such a constellation of intellect & learning as will illuminate your ship, he will still feel only too grateful if allowed to mingle, though ever so little, with these great lights, & borrow a look from of the radiance that falls, un o nno unnoted of themselves upon all who come within their orbits. Mr. Livingstone’s father commanded a brigade in the late war, & his, uncle was a class mate of Gen. Grant at West Point, & another uncle has served in the Senate of the United States for 16 years. Another member of the family has was for many years our Minister at the court of France, &c &c &c—

Cap—D—No use to read it all—a man could get passage in an Emperor’s state barge with half such a recommendation as that. I don’t propose to take the young man to Heaven. Th His money is received—that is of more consequence to me than it is to know what his respectable old grandfather did. I’ll take the money out of the balance of these letters & burn them. I guess I can risk the Com. on Credentials. Oh, that Com. on Cre. was a rare dodge! {Laughs exhaustingly or otherwise.}

{Exit.}

Act. II

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Scene I—Quarter Deck of a Steamer

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Enter 2 Newspaper Correspondents

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They look dejected. A pause.

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Mark Twain—Ah, me!

Stiggers—The remark I re was about to make.

M. T.—Well, how does it strike you?

S.—Don’t mention it.

M. T. (Quoting from the programme)—Splendid ship—so the programme hath it.

S.—Eight miles an hour.

M. T.— An abundance of Plenty of instrumental music.

S.—Three wheezy melodeons & a clarinet.

M. T.—Vocal ditto.

S.—Plymouth Collection of Hymns!2explanatory note

M. T.—Excessively select company.

S.—Selected out of a camp-meeting & a hospital—some of them sick, some of them crippled & the balance reading sermons & backbiting each other all day long.

M. T.—No passenger accepted without a spotless reputation

M. T.— A◇ Passengers will be lively, young & happy.

S.—Rustiest gang of old fossils since Methuselah’s time. There ain’t 14 out of the 60 but are over 60 years old.

M. T.—No passenger accepted without a spotless reputation.

Both—How did you get here?

M. T.—Committee on Credentials.

S.—Bah! Twelve hundred a & Fifty Dollars in greenbacks! Could have brought Sing-Sing3explanatory note along if they had the money.

M. T.—Beecher!

S.—Backed water—they advertised him to death.

M. T.—Gen Sherman!

S.—They made him sick, too. They made him an a medium for advertising the Grand Holy Land Funeral Excursion for Pleasure till he got so distressed at last till that he thought he fled to the savages of the plains— Plains— preferring a merciful swift death by a the tomahawk to the lingering torture of wearing out his life lugging carrying a bulletin board on his back.

M. T.—Maggie Mitchell.

S.—She died of advertising, too. Human nature couldn’t stand this infernal advertising!

{A Pause.}

M. T—Well, did you bring your share of the programme list of books? for the ship’s library?

S.—What is that?

M. T.—Tent Life in the Holy Land, Pilgrim’s Progress & Other Travels, Shepherd of Salisbury Plain, Thompson’s Whole Duty of Man,4explanatory note Mother Goose’s Melodies—

S.— I brought four reams of quarto post, thirty gross of steel pens & a barrel of gin!

M. T.—Stiggers, I love you. {They embrace.}

S.—Well, we’ve been out ten days, now, & at l and==here comes the whitest man in the ship!

{Enter Dan Sproat.}

(Low, fat, & chunky. & jolly

Dan—Boys, it’s awful. Them old pil venerable old pir pilgrims are going to run the prayer meeting every night, now that the most of them are not seasick any more, instead of every other night. And they’re going to have two sermon’s every Sunday. Ain’t it a gay pleasure trip, I don’t reckon? I wish we had brought along a corpse, & then we could have a bully funeral every now & then—anything to be cheerful. We’ll die with the dry rot if this sort of thing goes on. And don’t you know, tha they have been just howling about a the little wine claret & stuff that we take in our room occasionally. They are down on No. 105explanatory note you know. It’s on your account, Mark, not mine. And I say, Stiggers—I—here! I—by George there goes that old gong!—here, get behind the booby-hatch!—or them old pilgrims will rope you in for the prayer meeting. Just l Look at old Homily, now, with his nose in the air. He hasn’t got his sea-legs, yet—I would n’t laugh if one of them heavy seas was to fetch him. Would n’t care a d—n, either. {They hide.}

{Enter Patriarchs, male & female, in procession.}

Elder Homily—(With a sigh)—How wonderful is prophecy! Here we are, brethren & sisters, on far on the briny deep. We are not trusting in our own might, yet are we marvellously upheld. Such protection—such love as this, ought to warm are hearts toward all our fellow creatures & fill them with charity for all their shortcomings & sinful, sinful conduct. Ah yes, it ought. Let us be lenient with the failings of those who are in the ways of iniquity, & the paths of e-ter-nal destruction! Ah, me, there is that abandoned Sproat, for instance {Pantomime by Sproat & Co.}—& that Twain {More pantomime} & that ridiculous Stiggers {Extravagant by-play.} They drink & drink & drink, in that No. 10 till is it is horrible—perfectly horrible! And they smoke there—which is against the ship’s rules—& they have bribed the cabin crew & the porter & they burn safety lanterns there all night (which is against the rule, too) & say they are writing to the newspapers—which is a lie, brethren & sisters—they’re playing sinful 7-up . —That’s what they’re doing. Ain’t it so, sister Whistler?

Sis. S. (fine voice)—Yes, bless goodness, it is. It ain’t no longer ago than last night that the sea give one of them wretched heaves which it makes pretty nigh fetches my very insides out of me every time it does it, & goodness knows glad am I we don’t have ’em on the farm or sure I am that never I should survive, I know—Glory be to God! And when that sea give that heave I stumbled, sorter, & accidentally fell up aga agin the keyhole & lo & behold you I hear Dan Sproat say “I played the tray for low”—& Twain says “Seventeen for game,” & that sinful Stiggers he said he guessed tak he’d take a drink. And them way them heathens was a carrying on!—I never see hear the s beat of it in my life, bless you. Much they care whether the ship goes down or not.

Elder H—Much use it is to wrestle with the Lord for quiet weather with such as these on board. But it is our duty to wrestle—Brother Bascom is over his long hypocritical prayer by this time—

Sis. S—Which it never gets no higher than the fore-spanker-gaff-tops’l-jib-boom, I don’t them think—as them bejiggered sailors calls it, nobody being able to understand them but a born lunatic.

Elder S—And so we will wrestle if Providence be willing. {Exit.}

Stiggers—Now the blamd old bag of bogus piety is going down to pray up another nor-wester. These first time these people get a settled stomach in them they get out their Plymouth Collections & start another storm that sets them to heaving again. If they’d only let up once, we could have some fair weather. But didn’t they give it to us! Out of whole cloth, too! I’d like to catch old Whistler at that keyhole once. Here comes Bascom’s flock., now—stand back.