The Entire Project Gutenberg Works of Mark Twain eBook

Twenty-five years ago, a multitude of people in America put on their ascension robes, took a tearful leave of their friends, and made ready to fly up into heaven at the first blast of the trumpet.  But the angel did not blow it.  Miller’s resurrection day was a failure.  The Millerites were disgusted.  I did not suspect that there were Millers in Asia Minor, but a gentleman tells me that they had it all set for the world to come to an end in Smyrna one day about three years ago.  There was much buzzing and preparation for a long time previously, and it culminated in a wild excitement at the appointed time.  A vast number of the populace ascended the citadel hill early in the morning, to get out of the way of the general destruction, and many of the infatuated closed up their shops and retired from all earthly business.  But the strange part of it was that about three in the afternoon, while this gentleman and his friends were at dinner in the hotel, a terrific storm of rain, accompanied by thunder and lightning, broke forth and continued with dire fury for two or three hours.  It was a thing unprecedented in Smyrna at that time of the year, and scared some of the most skeptical.  The streets ran rivers and the hotel floor was flooded with water.  The dinner had to be suspended.  When the storm finished and left every body drenched through and through, and melancholy and half-drowned, the ascensionists came down from the mountain as dry as so many charity-sermons!  They had been looking down upon the fearful storm going on below, and really believed that their proposed destruction of the world was proving a grand success.

A railway here in Asia—­in the dreamy realm of the Orient—­in the fabled land of the Arabian Nights—­is a strange thing to think of.  And yet they have one already, and are building another.  The present one is well built and well conducted, by an English Company, but is not doing an immense amount of business.  The first year it carried a good many passengers, but its freight list only comprised eight hundred pounds of figs!

It runs almost to the very gates of Ephesus—­a town great in all ages of the world—­a city familiar to readers of the Bible, and one which was as old as the very hills when the disciples of Christ preached in its streets.  It dates back to the shadowy ages of tradition, and was the birthplace of gods renowned in Grecian mythology.  The idea of a locomotive tearing through such a place as this, and waking the phantoms of its old days of romance out of their dreams of dead and gone centuries, is curious enough.

We journey thither tomorrow to see the celebrated ruins.

CHAPTER XL.

This has been a stirring day.  The Superintendent of the railway put a train at our disposal, and did us the further kindness of accompanying us to Ephesus and giving to us his watchful care.  We brought sixty scarcely perceptible donkeys in the freight cars, for we had much ground to go over.  We have seen some of the most grotesque costumes, along the line of the railroad, that can be imagined.  I am glad that no possible combination of words could describe them, for I might then be foolish enough to attempt it.