for us. We merely glanced at it and were
ready for home.
They wouldn’t let us land at
Malta—quarantine; they would not let us
land in Sardinia; nor at Algiers, Africa; nor at Malaga,
Spain, nor Cadiz, nor at the Madeira islands.
So we got offended at all foreigners and turned
our backs upon them and came home. I suppose
we only stopped at the Bermudas because they were
in the programme. We did not care any thing
about any place at all. We wanted to go home.
Homesickness was abroad in the ship—it
was epidemic. If the authorities of New
York had known how badly we had it, they would have
quarantined us here.
The grand pilgrimage is over.
Good-bye to it, and a pleasant memory to it,
I am able to say in all kindness. I bear no malice,
no ill-will toward any individual that was connected
with it, either as passenger or officer.
Things I did not like at all yesterday I like very
well to-day, now that I am at home, and always hereafter
I shall be able to poke fun at the whole gang
if the spirit so moves me to do, without ever
saying a malicious word. The expedition accomplished
all that its programme promised that it should accomplish,
and we ought all to be satisfied with the management
of the matter, certainly. Bye-bye!
Marktwain.
I call that complimentary. It is complimentary;
and yet I never have received a word of thanks for
it from the Hadjis; on the contrary I speak nothing
but the serious truth when I say that many of them
even took exceptions to the article. In endeavoring
to please them I slaved over that sketch for two hours,
and had my labor for my pains. I never will
do a generous deed again.
Nearly one year has flown since this notable pilgrimage
was ended; and as I sit here at home in San Francisco
thinking, I am moved to confess that day by day the
mass of my memories of the excursion have grown more
and more pleasant as the disagreeable incidents of
travel which encumbered them flitted one by one out
of my mind—and now, if the Quaker City were
weighing her anchor to sail away on the very same cruise
again, nothing could gratify me more than to be a
passenger. With the same captain and even the
same pilgrims, the same sinners. I was on excellent
terms with eight or nine of the excursionists (they
are my staunch friends yet,) and was even on speaking
terms with the rest of the sixty-five. I have
been at sea quite enough to know that that was a very
good average. Because a long sea-voyage not
only brings out all the mean traits one has, and exaggerates
them, but raises up others which he never suspected
he possessed, and even creates new ones. A twelve
months’ voyage at sea would make of an ordinary
man a very miracle of meanness. On the other
hand, if a man has good qualities, the spirit seldom
moves him to exhibit them on shipboard, at least with
