MARK TWAIN

November S- Spent all day in Vedder's lofty studio,
and the evening with him and another artist spinning
yarns and drinking beer in a quiet saloon. Big row in the
street but no bloodshed.

Visited the Catacombs. One mummy (shapeless) and
one slender young girl's long hair and decaying bones—
both in stone coffins and both between 1500 and 1600
years old.

The greatest charm we have found in Europe by all
odds is the open fireplaces in Florence and Rome.

Of all countries America is the most comfortable. Palace
cars with water, food, liquors, fruit, attendance, water-
closets, space to walk about, heating apparatus, and a
seat secured beforehand of which no one can deprive you.
Plenty of trains, reasonably fast on great trunk lines,
sleeping-cars and not obliged to start or arrive at horrid
hours of the night. Clean closets in hotels—rare in Ger-
many, Switzerland and Italy. They serve a dinner better
in Europe, and outside the great cities they cook it
inlinitely better than in our minor cities. Their servants
are politer and far more efficient than ours. They do not
know what coffee is—nor cream. The former is the case
with all European hotels, without exception—but in ours
one finds something which at least vaguely resembles
cream.

All of which of course was written a very long
time ago. France and England today have some
of the finest trains in the world, and French
hotels especially have made great forward
strides in modern conveniences, sometimes to
the damage of their picturesqueness and charm.
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