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The Innocents Abroad — Volume 04 by Mark Twain
page 59 of 96 (61%)
bottom of every twenty. It is a noble staircase, and from a distance the
people toiling up it looked like insects. I mention this statue and this
stairway because they have their story. Richelieu founded Odessa
--watched over it with paternal care--labored with a fertile brain and a
wise understanding for its best interests--spent his fortune freely to
the same end--endowed it with a sound prosperity, and one which will yet
make it one of the great cities of the Old World--built this noble
stairway with money from his own private purse--and--. Well, the people
for whom he had done so much, let him walk down these same steps, one
day, unattended, old, poor, without a second coat to his back; and when,
years afterwards, he died in Sebastopol in poverty and neglect, they
called a meeting, subscribed liberally, and immediately erected this
tasteful monument to his memory, and named a great street after him.
It reminds me of what Robert Burns' mother said when they erected a
stately monument to his memory: "Ah, Robbie, ye asked them for bread and
they hae gi'en ye a stane."

The people of Odessa have warmly recommended us to go and call on the
Emperor, as did the Sebastopolians. They have telegraphed his Majesty,
and he has signified his willingness to grant us an audience. So we are
getting up the anchors and preparing to sail to his watering-place. What
a scratching around there will be, now! what a holding of important
meetings and appointing of solemn committees!--and what a furbishing up
of claw-hammer coats and white silk neck-ties! As this fearful ordeal we
are about to pass through pictures itself to my fancy in all its dread
sublimity, I begin to feel my fierce desire to converse with a genuine
Emperor cooling down and passing away. What am I to do with my hands?
What am I to do with my feet? What in the world am I to do with myself?


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