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.

CONCLUSION.

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