CHAPTER XIV
Notes for a New Book
"A Tramp Abroad"
mark twain and his family—Mrs. Clemens,
and their two little girls, Clara and Susy—accom-
panied by Miss Clara Spaulding of Elmira, N. Y.
(later Mrs. John B. Stanchfield) sailed on the
Holsatia for Hamburg, April n, 1878.
An exceedingly steady ship in an ordinary sea is the
Holsatia—rolls very little.
The ship, however, did not prove entirely sat-
isfactory. In one of his notes, partly in German,
he writes:
Noisy cabin—shrieking children—the ceaseless metallic
clatter of that old cracked kettle of a piano and the
thunder and pounding of the screw, with an occasional
avalanche of crashing crockery as the ship lurches, this
is the afternoon hell in this ship daily. But the piano is
the special hell—how it racks one's head.
Until it stops—then you think the scream-voiced boy
is it.
There goes the B's crying baby. Now a guffaw of beastly
laughter. Now the little Spanish boy is hurled headlong
down into our gangway by a lurch of the ship and fetches
up with a heavy bang and pile of books and rubbish
tumble down.
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