MAYOR GILROY SAILS FOR EUROPE
He Has a Celebrated, but Gloomy Fellow Passenger in the Person of Mark Twain.
Judging from the number of cabin passengers who were carried out by yesterday's outgoing steamships, the tide of eastward travel has begun to ebb. There were many staterooms to spare on the ships that sailed, but there were also many notables among the passengers, a full list of whom was printed in The New York Times yesterday.
Mayor Gilroy, who was among those who sailed by the Paris for Southampton, said just before embarking that he was making the trip simply for a rest, and that he intended to return on the Trave, early in September.
"I do not expect," he added, "to see Mr. Grace, and my trip has no political significance whatever. I have just come from the City Hall, where I have been saying goodbye to my friends. At my request, none of them came here to see me off."
The Mayor is accompanied by his two sons and Miss Fanny Gilroy. His party was followed over the gangplank by a solemn-visaged, grizzly-mustached individual, who is known to his fellow-passengers as Samuel L. Clemens, and to a wider circle as Mark Twain. A deckhand stationed at the gangplank eyed Mark with suspicion, and, blocking the way, demanded to know if he was a passenger. The innocent who was going abroad looked dismally at his questioner and said he didn't know. Then he carefully deposited a pictorial carpetbag on the gangplank and drew forth a passenger list, which he consulted with much deliberation. He found his name inscribed thereon, and announced with an air of triumph that he was a passenger. Then he gathered up his belongings and resumed his funereal march, while the astonished deckhand made anxious inquiries as to who the melancholy person was.
To the reporters Mark Twain explained that he was going over to see his wife and family, who are in Etrerat, and who are, according to the husband, supporting a couple of doctors at that place.
"When a European doctor gets hold of a good patient," Mark Twain observed, "the medical man passes the patient along to some friend in another place, and, like the Wandering Jew, the sick person is constantly kept moving.
"I am getting to be very fond of the ocean," he added gravely, and then said, more seriously, that after the first six or seven days he found a boundless enjoyment in a trip across.
The author neglected to add that the average time of passage these days is less than six days, and there is consequently a suspicion that his love for the ocean wave is not so very deep, after all.
Mrs. Mary Frost Ormbsy, who also sailed by the Paris, goes to represent the Universal Peace Union and the American Peace Society at the International Peace Congress in Antwerp. She says she deems her appointment by both organizations to represent America in another peace congress a sufficient reply to all the published attacks against her.
Others who sailed by the Paris were Henry E. Abbey, E. A. Apgar, Dr. William H. Bennett, J. E.Comins, Co.. Greene of the Seventy-first Regiment and Mrs. Greene, Mrs. E.Stauffer Chalmers, Bolossy Kiralfy, Mrs. J. V. L. Pruyn, Miss Mathilde Townsend, the Rev. and Mrs. Kearsey Thomas, Count and Countess Piola Caselli, W. H. Dayton, Mr. A. G. Menocal, Bishop and Mrs. A. N. Littlejohn and Miss Littlejohn, and F. D. Millet.
Return to The New York Times
index
Quotations | Newspaper Articles | Special Features | Links
| Search