ABSTRACT
Time spent abroad often makes travelers pine for a romanticized, even imagined sense of home. Accounts written by Americans travelers in the nineteenth century clearly document that a strong enough sense of “Americaness” existed for individuals to miss the creature comforts of home.1 Traveling throughout Europe in 1880, Mark Twain expressed his own wistful desire to be back in the United States and enjoy the pleasures of American culture. Tellingly, Twain’s expression of homesickness was expressed in his longing for American foods not available during his European travels and a desire to once again have “a nourishing meal,” because it had been “many months” since his appetite had been fulfilled. Twain fantasized about satiation and sketched out the components of an expansive meal that he would consume on arriving back in the United States, one that he desired to be “a modest, private affair, all to myself.”2
