with it, and brought up in mass at the rail; and when it rolled to port they went floundering down to port with the same unanimity of sentiment.  Waltzers spun around precariously for a matter of fifteen seconds and then went scurrying down to the rail as if they meant to go overboard.  The Virginia reel, as performed on board the Quaker City, had more genuine reel about it than any reel I ever saw before, and was as full of interest to the spectator as it was full of desperate chances and hairbreadth escapes to the participant.  We gave up dancing, finally.

We celebrated a lady’s birthday anniversary with toasts, speeches, a poem, and so forth.  We also had a mock trial.  No ship ever went to sea that hadn’t a mock trial on board.  The purser was accused of stealing an overcoat from stateroom No. 10.  A judge was appointed; also clerks, a crier of the court, constables, sheriffs; counsel for the State and for the defendant; witnesses were subpoenaed, and a jury empaneled after much challenging.  The witnesses were stupid and unreliable and contradictory, as witnesses always are.  The counsel were eloquent, argumentative, and vindictively abusive of each other, as was characteristic and proper.  The case was at last submitted and duly finished by the judge with an absurd decision and a ridiculous sentence.

The acting of charades was tried on several evenings by the young gentlemen and ladies, in the cabins, and proved the most distinguished success of all the amusement experiments.

An attempt was made to organize a debating club, but it was a failure.  There was no oratorical talent in the ship.

We all enjoyed ourselves—­I think I can safely say that, but it was in a rather quiet way.  We very, very seldom played the piano; we played the flute and the clarinet together, and made good music, too, what there was of it, but we always played the same old tune; it was a very pretty tune —­how well I remember it—­I wonder when I shall ever get rid of it.  We never played either the melodeon or the organ except at devotions—­but I am too fast:  young Albert did know part of a tune something about “O Something-Or-Other How Sweet It Is to Know That He’s His What’s-his-Name” (I do not remember the exact title of it, but it was very plaintive and full of sentiment); Albert played that pretty much all the time until we contracted with him to restrain himself.  But nobody ever sang by moonlight on the upper deck, and the congregational singing at church and prayers was not of a superior order of architecture.  I put up with it as long as I could and then joined in and tried to improve it, but this encouraged young George to join in too, and that made a failure of it; because George’s voice was just “turning,” and when he was singing a dismal sort of bass it was apt to fly off the handle and startle everybody with a most discordant cackle on the upper notes.  George didn’t know the tunes, either, which was also a drawback to his performances.  I said: