C. C. DUNCAN P.S.--The very beautiful and substantial side-wheel steamship Quaker City has been chartered for the occasion, and will leave New York June 8th. Letters have been issued by the government commending the party to courtesies abroad. What was there lacking about that program to make it perfectly irresistible?
Nothing that any finite mind could discover. Paris, England, Scotland, Switzerland, Italy--Garibaldi! The Grecian Archipelago! Vesuvius! Constantinople!
Smyrna! The Holy Land! Egypt and "our friends the Bermudians"! People in Europe desiring to join the excursion--contagious sickness to be avoided--boating at the expense of the ship--physician on board--the circuit of the globe to be made if the passengers unanimously desired it--the company to be rigidly selected by a pitiless "Committee on Applications"--the vessel to be as rigidly selected by as pitiless a "Committee on Selecting Steamer."Human nature could not withstand these bewildering temptations. I hurried to the treasurer's office and deposited my ten percent. I rejoiced to know that a few vacant staterooms were still left. I did avoid a critical personal examination into my character by that bowelless committee, but I referred to all the people of high standing I could think of in the community who would be least likely to know anything about me.
Shortly a supplementary program was issued which set forth that the Plymouth Collection of Hymns would be used on board the ship. Ithen paid the balance of my passage money.
I was provided with a receipt and duly and officially accepted as an excursionist. There was happiness in that but it was tame compared to the novelty of being "select."This supplementary program also instructed the excursionists to provide themselves with light musical instruments for amusement in the ship, with saddles for Syrian travel, green spectacles and umbrellas, veils for Egypt, and substantial clothing to use in rough pilgrimizing in the Holy Land.
Furthermore, it was suggested that although the ship's library would afford a fair amount of reading matter, it would still be well if each passenger would provide himself with a few guidebooks, a Bible, and some standard works of travel. A list was appended, which consisted chiefly of books relating to the Holy Land, since the Holy Land was part of the excursion and seemed to be its main feature.
Reverend Henry Ward Beecher was to have accompanied the expedition, but urgent duties obliged him to give up the idea. There were other passengers who could have been spared better and would have been spared more willingly.
Lieutenant General Sherman was to have been of the party also, but the Indian war compelled his presence on the plains. A popular actress had entered her name on the ship's books, but something interfered and she couldn't go. The "Drummer Boy of the Potomac" deserted, and lo, we had never a celebrity left!
However, we were to have a "battery of guns" from the Navy Department (as per advertisement) to be used in answering royal salutes; and the document famished by the Secretary of the Navy, which was to make "General Sherman and party" welcome guests in the courts and camps of the old world, was still left to us, though both document and battery, I think, were shorn of somewhat of their original august proportions. However, had not we the seductive program still, with its Paris, its Constantinople, Smyrna, Jerusalem, Jericho, and "our friends the Bermudians"? What did we care?