He states
that a growing youth among his ship's passengers was in the constant
habit of appeasing his hunger with soap and oakum between meals.
In Palestine he tells of ants that came eleven miles to spend
the summer in the desert and brought their provisions with them;
yet he shows by his description of the country that the feat was
an impossibility. He mentions, as if it were the most commonplace
of matters, that he cut a Moslem in two in broad daylight in Jerusalem,
with Godfrey de Bouillon's sword, and would have shed more blood IF
HE HAD HAD A GRAVEYARD OF HIS OWN. These statements are unworthy
a moment's attention. Mr. Twain or any other foreigner who did
such a thing in Jerusalem would be mobbed, and would infallibly
lose his life. But why go on? Why repeat more of his audacious
and exasperating falsehoods? Let us close fittingly with this one:
he affirms that "in the mosque of St. Sophia at Constantinople
I got my feet so stuck up with a complication of gums, slime,
and general impurity, that I wore out more than two thousand
pair of bootjacks getting my boots off that night, and even then
some Christian hide peeled off with them." It is monstrous.
Such statements are simply lies--there is no other name for them.
Will the reader longer marvel at the brutal ignorance that pervades
the American nation when we tell him that we are informed upon perfectly
good authority that this extravagant compilation of falsehoods,
this exhaustless mine of stupendous lies, this INNOCENTS ABROAD,
has actually been adopted by the schools and colleges of several
of the states as a text-book!
But if his falsehoods are distressing, his innocence and his ignorance
are enough to make one burn the book and despise the author.
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