The sailing date was conveniently arranged and there followed a happy
cruise among those balmy islands. Mark Twain was particularly fond
of “Tom” Reed, who had been known as “Czar” Reed in Congress, but was
delightfully human in his personal life. They argued politics a good
deal, and Reed, with all his training and intimate practical knowledge
of the subject, confessed that he “couldn't argue with a man like that.”
“Do you believe the things you say?” he asked once, in his thin,
falsetto voice.
“Yes,” said Clemens. “Some of them.”
“Well, you want to look out. If you go on this way, by and by you'll get
to believing nearly everything you say.”
Draw poker appears to have been their favorite diversion. Clemens in his
notes reports that off the coast of Florida Reed won twenty-three pots
in succession. It was said afterward that they made no stops at any
harbor; that when the chief officer approached the poker-table and told
them they were about to enter some important port he received peremptory
orders to “sail on and not interrupt the game.” This, however, may be
regarded as more or less founded on fiction.