At the banquet presided over by the
Lord Mayor of Liverpool, which was the signal of Mark Twain's farewell
to the English people, his peroration was as follows:
"Many and many a year ago I read an anecdote in Dana's Two Years Before
the Mast. A frivolous little self-important captain of a coasting-sloop
in the dried-apple and kitchen-furniture trade was always hailing every
vessel that came in sight, just to hear himself talk and air his small
grandeurs. One day a majestic Indiaman came ploughing by, with course
on course of canvas towering into the sky, her decks and yards swarming
with sailors, with macaws and monkeys and all manner of strange and
romantic creatures populating her rigging, and thereto her freightage of
precious spices lading the breeze with gracious and mysterious odours of
the Orient. Of course, the little coaster-captain hopped into the
shrouds and squeaked a hail: 'Ship ahoy! What ship is that, and whence
and whither?' In a deep and thunderous bass came the answer back,
through a speaking trumpet: The Begum of Bengal, a hundred and
twenty-three days out from Canton homeward bound! What ship is that?'
The little captain's vanity was all crushed out of him, and most humbly
he squeaked back: 'Only the Mary Ann--fourteen hours from Boston, bound
for Kittery Point with--with nothing to speak of!' That eloquent word
'only' expressed the deeps of his stricken humbleness.
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