Prescott journal. [volume] (Prescott, Wis.) 1861-1871, 1867-09-14
iiars Twain in QuaraBtine-The Perse-
cutlOns OF Hhe Quaker aity.


cutlOns OF the Quaker atty.
4" Mark Twain, the best of the
American bumorists since the death oil
Artemus Ward, is one of the excursion.
lists Co the Holy Land, in the Quaker
City. That vessel having been order
ed into quarantine at Naples, Mark
protests in the following letter, publish.
ed in the Naples Observer, of August
81 X:
HARBoR OF NAPLES, Aug 2, '67.
Mr.. EDITOR-I must mildly, but
firmly, protest against the quarantining
of our excursion vessel, the Quaker
City, in the harbor of Naples. You
need not be afraid of catching the
cholera from US. We have been fun.
igated--nOt once only, but several
times at the Lake of Como, at Lee.
co, and most internally at Venice. We
have been fumigated until we smell
of all the vile stenches that can be
compounded or imagined. Each and
every passenger has acquired a dis
tinct and individual color, and
made it his own, and you can
recognize any one OF them by it in the
dark as far as you can smell him. Now
there is no possible danger in u.s. We
DO not smell like any thing on earth,
or ike any thing in any other place,
except 1T be IN perdition itself. There
fore why not let us go at large?
Your people can easily tell when any
of us are around, if We go to windward
of them, and save themselves by flight
You need not be afraid they will take
other smells for ours. They may I'M
agine they smell us sometimes, whe II
they do not, but whenever they
do smell us IN reality they will
not be In doubt any more
Now, do not leave us here to ''waste
our sweetness on the desert air, but
set us at large IN your magnificent city,
aud let us give a pleasing variety to
the fragrance that dwells IN it's atmOs-
phere. DO it. We Can make you sing
clark from the Tombs." You would
think we were right from there.
But seriously now, it is great hard
ship TO be cooped mp here day after day,
when we have done no harm. Hon
estly, we have not brought any cholera
with us from Leghorn. They would
not have let us take it ont of the conn
try without paying duty on it. You
know that yourself. If we had aoy
cholera with us we would have given it
to the people at Clvlta Vecchia. We
wanted TO give them something for In
fiicting such hot weather on us, but we
had not any cholera or anything they
would be likely to care about, and so
they had to go without, which was
shameful.
They never interfered with us at Fay
al tAzore Islands) nor at Gibraltar,
Marseilles, Genoa, or Leghorn except
at the latter place they mistook us for
piratical revolutionary expedition OF
some sort or other, with designs
against the Government, and therefore
sent gunboat TO watch us day and
nighE-but here you have gone and
done thing that will give us a reputa-
ton for peddling cholera around the
world, aud we may never get rid of it.
We want to go to Athens, CONSTANT
nople, Thebes, the Pyramids, and the
Holy Land, and We want to go with a
good name. Now, can we go even at all,
if the people in these countries gather
the imp ession that we are a gigantic
exterminating expedition, whose mis-
sion it is to kill all we can with cholera,
and finish the rest with stencil so afro
cious that only such as are educated to
it can hope to smell and survive.
Come, let us out of this, and behold
we viii bless you.
am yours Ob'tly,
MARK TWAIN.
p. ST you cannot let us ont, ]
wish you would at least suspend the
rule that prohibits profanity here. Let