A TRAMP ABROAD By Mark Twain

but the recollection of that long, dragging, relentless season

of suffering is indestructible. To have to endure it

in silence, and sitting still, made it all the harder.

I was in a railed compartment with eight or ten strangers,

of the two sexes, and this compelled repression;

yet at times the pain was so exquisite that I could hardly

keep the tears back. At those times, as the howlings

and wailings and shrieking of the singers, and the ragings

and roarings and explosions of the vast orchestra rose

higher and higher, and wilder and wilder, and fiercer

and fiercer, I could have cried if I had been alone.

Those strangers would not have been surprised to see

a man do such a thing who was being gradually skinned,

but they would have marveled at it here, and made remarks

about it no doubt, whereas there was nothing in the

present case which was an advantage over being skinned.

There was a wait of half an hour at the end of the first act,

and I could not trust myself to do it, for I felt that I

should desert to stay out. There was another wait

of half an hour toward nine o’clock, but I had gone

through so much by that time that I had no spirit left,

and so had no desire but to be let alone.

I do not wish to suggest that the rest of the people there

were like me, for, indeed, they were not. Whether it

was that they naturally liked that noise, or whether it

was that they had learned to like it by getting used to it,

I did not at the time know; but they did like–this was

plain enough. While it was going on they sat and looked

as rapt and grateful as cats do when one strokes their backs;

and whenever the curtain fell they rose to their feet,

in one solid mighty multitude, and the air was snowed thick

with waving handkerchiefs, and hurricanes of applause

swept the place. This was not comprehensible to me.

Of course, there were many people there who were not

under compulsion to stay; yet the tiers were as full at

the close as they had been at the beginning. This showed

that the people liked it.

It was a curious sort of a play. In the manner

of costumes and scenery it was fine and showy enough;

but there was not much action. That is to say,

there was not much really done, it was only talked about;

and always violently. It was what one might call a

narrative play. Everybody had a narrative and a grievance,

and none were reasonable about it, but all in an offensive

and ungovernable state. There was little of that sort

of customary thing where the tenor and the soprano stand

down by the footlights, warbling, with blended voices,

and keep holding out their arms toward each other and drawing

them back and spreading both hands over first one breast

and then the other with a shake and a pressure–no,

it was every rioter for himself and no blending.

Each sang his indictive narrative in turn, accompanied by

the whole orchestra of sixty instruments, and when this had

continued for some time, and one was hoping they might come

to an understanding and modify the noise, a great chorus

composed entirely of maniacs would suddenly break forth,

and then during two minutes, and sometimes three, I lived

over again all that I suffered the time the orphan asylum burned

down.

We only had one brief little season of heaven and heaven’s

sweet ecstasy and peace during all this long and diligent

and acrimonious reproduction of the other place.

This was while a gorgeous procession of people marched around

and around, in the third act, and sang the Wedding Chorus.

To my untutored ear that was music–almost divine music.

While my seared soul was steeped in the healing balm

of those gracious sounds, it seemed to me that I could

almost resuffer the torments which had gone before,

in order to be so healed again. There is where the deep

ingenuity of the operatic idea is betrayed. It deals so