On 26 March 2005, Tracy Wuster wrote:

"Mark Twain's quote from the speech about baseball being "the very
symbol ... of the raging, tearing, booming nineteenth century!" is
one of the main quotes brought up when talking about the Spalding
world tour or nineteenth century baseball in general.  The main
image of the tour, which Twain no doubt saw at the banquet, was of
the players arrayed on the Sphinx.  Shelley Fishkin pointed out to me
that this image is modified in an illustration from Tom Sawyer
Abroad, which has Jim standing on the Sphinx."

A colleague writes with a question about the Sphinx photo:

I was under the impression that the famous Sphinx photo was of the
1905 champion New York Giants (managed by the formidable John McGraw,
who had just won the World Series, after refusing to play in it in
1904) in Egypt. I think that the reference I recall is from a Darryl
Brock book about Dummy Taylor, a deaf mute pitcher on that team.

While it seems likely that every team that traveled to Egypt had their
photo taken with the Sphinx, has the Spalding tour photo (1889) ever been
published?  It would be interesting to compare it to the image of
Jim standing on the Sphinx in _Tom Sawyer Abroad_ (1894).

Barb