After prayers the Synagogue shortly took the semblance of a writing school.  The like of that picture was never seen in a ship before.  Behind the long dining tables on either side of the saloon, and scattered from one end to the other of the latter, some twenty or thirty gentlemen and ladies sat them down under the swaying lamps and for two or three hours wrote diligently in their journals.  Alas! that journals so voluminously begun should come to so lame and impotent a conclusion as most of them did!  I doubt if there is a single pilgrim of all that host but can show a hundred fair pages of journal concerning the first twenty days’ voyaging in the Quaker City, and I am morally certain that not ten of the party can show twenty pages of journal for the succeeding twenty thousand miles of voyaging!  At certain periods it becomes the dearest ambition of a man to keep a faithful record of his performances in a book; and he dashes at this work with an enthusiasm that imposes on him the notion that keeping a journal is the veriest pastime in the world, and the pleasantest.  But if he only lives twenty-one days, he will find out that only those rare natures that are made up of pluck, endurance, devotion to duty for duty’s sake, and invincible determination may hope to venture upon so tremendous an enterprise as the keeping of a journal and not sustain a shameful defeat.

One of our favorite youths, Jack, a splendid young fellow with a head full of good sense, and a pair of legs that were a wonder to look upon in the way of length and straightness and slimness, used to report progress every morning in the most glowing and spirited way, and say: 

“Oh, I’m coming along bully!” (he was a little given to slang in his happier moods.) “I wrote ten pages in my journal last night—­and you know I wrote nine the night before and twelve the night before that.  Why, it’s only fun!”

“What do you find to put in it, Jack?”

“Oh, everything.  Latitude and longitude, noon every day; and how many miles we made last twenty-four hours; and all the domino games I beat and horse billiards; and whales and sharks and porpoises; and the text of the sermon Sundays (because that’ll tell at home, you know); and the ships we saluted and what nation they were; and which way the wind was, and whether there was a heavy sea, and what sail we carried, though we don’t ever carry any, principally, going against a head wind always—­wonder what is the reason of that?—­and how many lies Moult has told—­Oh, every thing!  I’ve got everything down.  My father told me to keep that journal.  Father wouldn’t take a thousand dollars for it when I get it done.”

“No, Jack; it will be worth more than a thousand dollars—­when you get it done.”

“Do you?—­no, but do you think it will, though?

“Yes, it will be worth at least as much as a thousand dollars—­when you get it done.  May be more.”

“Well, I about half think so, myself.  It ain’t no slouch of a journal.”