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"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. I then 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 furnished 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?

CHAPTER II.
Occasionally, during the following month, I dropped in at 117 Wall Street to inquire how
the repairing and refurnishing of the vessel was coming on, how additions to the
passenger list were averaging, how many people the committee were decreeing not
"select" every day and banishing in sorrow and tribulation. I was glad to know that we
were to have a little printing press on board and issue a daily newspaper of our own. I
was glad to learn that our piano, our parlor organ, and our melodeon were to be the best
instruments of the kind that could be had in the market. I was proud to observe that
among our excursionists were three ministers of the gospel, eight doctors, sixteen or
eighteen ladies, several military and naval chieftains with sounding titles, an ample crop
of "Professors" of various kinds, and a gentleman who had "COMMISSIONER OF THE
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA TO EUROPE, ASIA, AND AFRICA" thundering
after his name in one awful blast! I had carefully prepared myself to take rather a back
seat in that ship because of the uncommonly select material that would alone be permitted
to pass through the camel's eye of that committee on credentials; I had schooled myself to
expect an imposing array of military and naval heroes and to have to set that back seat
still further back in consequence of it maybe; but I state frankly that I was all unprepared
for this crusher.
I fell under that titular avalanche a torn and blighted thing. I said that if that potentate
must go over in our ship, why, I supposed he must --but that to my thinking, when the
United States considered it necessary to send a dignitary of that tonnage across the ocean,
it would be in better taste, and safer, to take him apart and cart him over in sections in
several ships.
Ah, if I had only known then that he was only a common mortal, and that his mission had
nothing more overpowering about it than the collecting of seeds and uncommon