On this day in literature . . .

~ 1867 ~ Mark Twain embarks on a journey through Europe to the Holy Land that will inspire his 1869 work The Innocents Abroad.

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness and many of our people need it sorely on those accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.
- Mark Twain




"He’s not the first American writer to travel to Europe and the Middle East and report back, but he’s the first one who travels abroad and travels as though America were the center of the universe."

- "Mark Twain" (Ken Burns Documentary)