CHAPTER I.

A man may have no bad habits and have worse.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

The starting point of this lecturing-trip around the world was Paris,
where we had been living a year or two.

We sailed for America, and there made certain preparations. This took
but little time. Two members of my family elected to go with me. Also a
carbuncle. The dictionary says a carbuncle is a kind of jewel. Humor is
out of place in a dictionary.

We started westward from New York in midsummer, with Major Pond to manage
the platform-business as far as the Pacific. It was warm work, all the
way, and the last fortnight of it was suffocatingly smoky, for in Oregon
and Columbia the forest fires were raging. We had an added week of smoke
at the seaboard, where we were obliged awhile for our ship. She had been
getting herself ashore in the smoke, and she had to be docked and
repaired.

We sailed at last; and so ended a snail-paced march across the continent,
which had lasted forty days.

We moved westward about mid-afternoon over a rippled and summer sea; an
enticing sea, a clean and cool sea, and apparently a welcome sea to all
on board; it certainly was to the distressful dustings and smokings and
swelterings of the past weeks. The voyage would furnish a three-weeks
holiday, with hardly a break in it. We had the whole Pacific Ocean in