The Innocents Abroad (1869) is a parody of the emotional trip books that were widely read in the middle of the nineteenth century, and it is based on a series of letters Mark Twain sent from Europe to newspapers in San Francisco and New York while serving as a roving correspondent. The ancient saint statues on the Cathedral of Notre Dame are "battered and broken-nosed old fellows," and tour guides "interrupt every dream, every pleasant train of thought, with their tiresome cackling," according to Twain's new and humorous perspective on revered European landmarks, which lacks respect for the past. Twain, who is as irreverent about European views as he is about American manners (including his own), comes to the realisation that, for better or worse, "human nature is very much the same all over the world."