Memes

Twain also wrote often about meeting annoying US tourists on his travels and going out of his way to avoid them. For example in "A Tramp Abroad", after describing a particular annoying interaction with one he writes:

And away he went. He went uninjured, too—I had the murderous impulse to harpoon him in the back with my alpenstock, but as I raised the weapon the disposition left me; I found I hadn’t the heart to kill him, he was such a joyous, innocent, good-natured numbskull.