Dead Cats in Bermuda

Submitted by scott on Mon, 06/24/2019 - 18:29
Twain and Twichell

Mark Twain and his friend, the reverend Joseph Twichell, visited Bermuda fro May 17 to 21 of 1877.   They spend a good deal of time walking along the roads, viewing the countryside.  At one point they stopped at a cottage for a drink of water and conversation with a man whose name was not Mr. Smith. He had a sorry tale to tell of his neighbors and their dead cats and the litigation caused by the cats demise.

 

The illustration is actually from "A Tramp Abroad" but I thought it an appropriate caricature of the two men.

Following the Equator: Chapter XLII

Submitted by scott on Sun, 06/23/2019 - 10:30
Midnight in a Bombay Street

Mark Twain travels through the dark streets of Bombay after night fall.  The streets are full of sleeping figures stretched out on the ground, wrapped in blankets with barely enough room for the carriage.  He attends a betrothal celebration featuring Nautch dancers and musicians.  This occurs before the plague hits the city but at the time of his writing this chapter the city is decimated with the plague.  Twain includes a passage from "Eothen" by Alexander William Kinglake, imagining the onset of the plague.  He writes "Kinglake was in Cairo many years ago during an epidemic of the Black D