The Project Gutenberg EBook of Some Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion
by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)

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Title: Some Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion

Author: Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)

Last Updated: February 15, 2009
Release Date: August 19, 2006 [EBook #3182]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RAMBLING NOTES ***

Produced by David Widger and Trevor Carlson

SOME RAMBLING NOTES OF AN IDLE EXCURSION

by Mark Twain

I.

All the journeyings I had ever done had been purely in the way of
business. The pleasant May weather suggested a novelty namely, a trip
for pure recreation, the bread-and-butter element left out. The Reverend
said he would go, too; a good man, one of the best of men, although a
clergyman. By eleven at night we were in New Haven and on board the New
York boat. We bought our tickets, and then went wandering around here
and there, in the solid comfort of being free and idle, and of putting
distance between ourselves and the mails and telegraphs.

After a while I went to my stateroom and undressed, but the night
was too enticing for bed. We were moving down the bay now, and it was
pleasant to stand at the window and take the cool night breeze and watch
the gliding lights on shore. Presently, two elderly men sat down
under that window and began a conversation. Their talk was properly
no business of mine, yet I was feeling friendly toward the world and
willing to be entertained. I soon gathered that they were brothers, that
they were from a small Connecticut village, and that the matter in hand
concerned the cemetery. Said one:

"Now, John, we talked it all over amongst ourselves, and this is what
we've done. You see, everybody was a-movin' from the old buryin'-ground,
and our folks was 'most about left to theirselves, as you may say. They
was crowded, too, as you know; lot wa'n't big enough in the first place;
and last year, when Seth's wife died, we couldn't hardly tuck her in.
She sort o' overlaid Deacon Shorb's lot, and he soured on her, so to
speak, and on the rest of us, too. So we talked it over, and I was for
a lay out in the new simitery on the hill. They wa'