during any odd intervals; those
who are wont to regard Mark Twain as lazy may consider these statistics.
That he detested manual labor is true enough, but at the work for which
he was fitted and intended it may be set down here upon authority (and
despite his own frequent assertions to the contrary) that to his last
year he was the most industrious of men.

LXI. THE INNOCENTS ABROAD

It was Dan, Jack, and the Doctor who with Mark Twain wandered down
through Italy and left moral footprints that remain to this day.
The Italian guides are wary about showing pieces of the True Cross,
fragments of the Crown of Thorns, and the bones of saints since then.
They show them, it is true, but with a smile; the name of Mark Twain
is a touch-stone to test their statements. Not a guide in Italy but has
heard the tale of that iconoclastic crew, and of the book which turned
their marvels into myths, their relics into bywords.

It was Doctor Jackson, Colonel Denny, Doctor Birch, and Samuel Clemens
who evaded the quarantine and made the perilous night trip to Athens and
looked upon the Parthenon and the sleeping city by moonlight. It is all
set down in the notes, and the account varies little from that given
in the book; only he does not tell us that Captain Duncan and the
quartermaster, Pratt, connived at the escapade, or how the latter
watched the shore in anxious suspense until he heard the whistle which
was their signal to be taken aboard. It would have meant six months'
imprisonment if they had been captured, for there was no discretion in
the Greek law.

It was T. D. Crocker, A. N. Sanford, Col. Peter Kinney, and William
Gibson who were delegated to draft the address to the Emperor of Russia
at Yalta, with Samuel L. Clemens as chairman of that committee. The
chairman wrote the address, the opening sentence of which he grew so
weary of hearing:

We are a handful of private citizens of America, traveling simply
for recreation, and unostentatiously, as becomes our unofficial
state.

The address is all set down in the notes, and there also exists the
first rough draft, with the emendations in his own hand. He deplores the
time it required:

That job is over. Writing addresses to emperors is not my strong
suit. However, if it is not as good as it might be it doesn't
signify--the other committeemen ought to have helped me write it;
they had nothing to do, and I had my hands full. But for botherin