Chapter IX: Confessions of a Columbus

The Cause of my Cruise--No Work--The Atlantic Greyhound--Irish
Ship--Irish Doctor--Irish Visitors--Queenstown--A
Surprise--Fiddles--Edward Lloyd--Lib--Chess--The Syren--The American
Pilot--Real and Ideal--Red Tape--Bribery--Liberty--The Floating Flower
Show--The Bouquet--A Bath and a Bishop--"Beastly Healthy"--Entertainment
for Shipwrecked Sailors--Passengers--Superstition.

AMERICA IN A HURRY--Harry Columbus Furniss--The Inky Inquisition--First
Impressions--Trilby--Tempting Offers--Kidnapped--Major
Pond--Sarony--Ice--James B. Brown--Fire!--An Explanation.

WASHINGTON--Mr. French of Nowhere--Sold--Interviewed--The Sporting
Editor--Hot Stuff--The Capitol--Congress--House of Representatives--The
Page Boys--The Agent--Filibuster--The "Reccard"--A
Pandemonium--Interviewing the President.

CHICAGO--The Windy City--Blowers--Niagara--Water and Wood--Darkness to
Light--My Vis-a-Vis--Mr. Punch--My Driver--It Grows upon
Me--Inspiration--Harnessing Niagara--The Three Sisters--Incline
Railway--Captain Webb.

TRAVELLING--Tickets--Thirst--Sancho Panza--Proclaimed States--"The
Amurrican Gurl"--A Lady Interviewer--The English Girl--A Hair
Restorer--Twelfth Night Club Reception at a Ladies' Club--The Great
Presidential Election--Sound Money _v._ Free Silver--Slumland--Detective
O'Flaherty.

_pp._ 26--130

CHAPTER X.

AUSTRALIA.

Quarantined--The Receiver-General of Australia--An Australian
Guide-book--A Death Trap--A Death Story--The New Chum--Commercial
Confessions--Mad Melbourne--Hydrophobia--Madness--A Land Boom--A Paper
Panic--Ruin.

SYDNEY--The Confessions of a Legislator--Federation--Patrick Francis
Moran.

ADELAIDE--Wanted, a Harbour--Wanted, an
Expression--Zoological--Guinea-pigs--Paradise!--Types--Hell Fire
Jack--The Horse--The Wrong Room! _pp._ 131--153

CHAPTER XI.

PLATFORM CONFESSIONS.

Lectures and Lecturers--The Boy's Idea--How to Deliver It--The
Professor--The Actors--My First Platform--Smoke--Cards--On the
Table--Nurses--Some Unrehearsed Effects--Dress--A Struggle with a
Shirt--A Struggle with a Bluebottle--Sir William Harcourt Goes out--My
Lanternists Go Out--Chairmen--The Absent Chairman--The Ideal
Chairman--The Political Chairman--The Ignorant
Chairman--Chestnuts--Misunderstood--Advice to Those about to Lecture--I
am Overworked--"'Arry to Harry." _pp._ 154-189

CHAPTER XII.

MY CONFESSIONS AS A "REFORMER."

Portraiture Past and Present--The National Portrait Gallery
Scandal--Fashionable Portraiture--The Price of an Autograph--Marquis
Tseng--"So That's My Father!"--Sala Attacks Me--My Retort--Du Maurier's
Little Joke--My Speech--What I Said and What I Did Not Say--Fury of
Sala--The Great Six-Toe Trial--Lockwood Serious--My Little
Joke--Nottingham Again--Prince of Journalists--Royal Academy Antics--An
Earnest Confession--My Object--My Lady
Oil--Congratulations--Confirmations--The Tate Gallery--The Proposed
Banquet--The P.R.A. and Modern Art--My Confessions in the Central
Criminal Court--Cricket in the Park--Reform!--All About that Snake--The
Discovery--The Capture--Safe--The Press--Mystery--Evasive--Experts--I
Retaliate--The _Westminster Gazette_--The Schoolboy--The
Scare--Sensation--Death--Matters Zoological--Modern Inconveniences--Do
Women Fail in Art?--Wanted a Wife _pp._ 190-234

CHAPTER XIII.

THE CONFESSIONS OF A DINER.

My FirstCity Dinner--A Minnow against the Stream--Those Table Plans--Chaos
--The City Alderman, Past and Present--Whistler's Lollipops--Odd
Volumes--Exchanging Names--Ye Red Lyon Clubbe--The Pointed
Beard--Baltimore Oysters--The Sound Money Dinner--To Meet General
Boulanger--A Lunch at Washington--No Speeches.

THE THIRTEEN CLUB--What it was--How it was Boomed--Gruesome
Details--Squint-Eyed Waiters--Superstitious Absentees--My Reasons for
being Present--'Arry of _Punch_--The Lost "Vocal" Chords--The
Undergraduate and the Undertaker--Model Speeches--Albert Smith--An
Atlantic Contradiction--The White Horse--The White Feather--Exit 13
_pp._ 235-271