Submitted by scott on Sat, 11/05/2011 - 13:39

This chapter does not appear to derive from Twain's letters to the Daily Alta California except for the final paragraph of letter number 5, published September 5. Twain travels from Marseilles to Paris by train. He describes the French railway cars and the fact that no water closets may be found on the train, only in the stations. We are treated to a comparison with his stagecoach ride from Missouri to California, as related in Roughing It. Twain provides us with a portrait of "The Old Traveler", someone we can still meet today. That retired person of leisure, vacationing in a foreign land, who knows more about most everything than anyone else. Twain meets this person, in different guises, several times during the Quaker City Excursion. Twain suffers the loss of one of his cherished fantasies, a luxurious shave by a French barber, by painful experience. He is also disappointed by the lack of gas lights in his hotel room.

Reading Date
August 16, 2011
SL Venue
Fate Gardens

Twain Chapter Comments

A better slide show, I hope I have switched from using dvd-slideshow to PhotoFilmStrip for production of my slideshows. I'm now experimenting with adding additional images that I hope are related to the audio dialogue. These come from a a variety of sources found by Google search as well as from other Twain books. In this case images from Roughing It are used in the portion where Twain describes his stagecoach ride from Missouri to California. PhotoFilmStrip seems to handle the Ken Burns effect better than dvd-slideshow.

The information about French cars appeared in Letter Number 5 Daily Alta California but was completely rewritten.

The account of the barbers originated in Letter Number 8 Daily Alta California, most of the letter actually appears in chapter 20.

Twain mentions passing through Lyons and the Saone but if I'm not mistaken he meant Lyon.