excursion.  The writer was pleasantly complimentary to officers and passengers.  He referred to Moses S. Beach, of the Sun, who was taking with him type and press, whereby he would “skilfully utilize the brains of the company for their mutual edification.”  Mr. Beecher and General Sherman would find talent enough aboard to make the hours go pleasantly (evidently the writer had not interested himself sufficiently to know that these gentlemen were not along), and the paragraph closed by prophesying other such excursions, and wishing the travelers “good speed, a happy voyage, and a safe return.”

That was handsome, especially for those days; only now, some fine day, when an airship shall start with a band of happy argonauts to land beyond the sunrise for the first time in history, we shall feature it and emblazon it with pictures in the Sunday papers, and weeklies, and in the magazines.—­[The Quaker City idea was so unheard-of that in some of the foreign ports visited, the officials could not believe that the vessel was simply a pleasure-craft, and were suspicious of some dark, ulterior purpose.]

That Henry Ward Beecher and General Sherman had concluded not to go was a heavy disappointment at first; but it proved only a temporary disaster.  The inevitable amalgamation of all ship companies took place.  The sixty-seven travelers fell into congenial groups, or they mingled and devised amusements, and gossiped and became a big family, as happy and as free from contention as families of that size are likely to be.

The Quaker City was a good enough ship and sizable for her time.  She was registered eighteen hundred tons—­about one-tenth the size of Mediterranean excursion-steamers today—­and when conditions were favorable she could make ten knots an hour under steam—­or, at least, she could do it with the help of her auxiliary sails.  Altogether she was a cozy, satisfactory ship, and they were a fortunate company who had her all to themselves and went out on her on that long-ago ocean gipsying.  She has grown since then, even to the proportions of the Mayflower.  It was necessary for her to grow to hold all of those who in later times claimed to have sailed in her on that voyage with Mark Twain.—­[The Quaker City passenger list will be found under Appendix F, at the end of last volume.]

They were not all ministers and deacons aboard the Quaker City.  Clemens found other congenial spirits be sides his room-mate Dan Slote—­among them the ship’s surgeon, Dr. A. Reeve Jackson (the guide-destroying “Doctor” of The Innocents); Jack Van Nostrand, of New Jersey ("Jack"); Julius Moulton, of St. Louis ("Moult"), and other care-free fellows, the smoking-room crowd which is likely to make comradeship its chief watchword.  There were companionable people in the cabin crowd also —­fine, intelligent men and women, especially one of the latter, a middle-aged, intellectual, motherly soul—­Mrs. A. W. Fairbanks, of Cleveland, Ohio.  Mrs. Fairbanks—­herself