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 any sort of emphasis. Now I am
satisfied that our pilgrims are pleasant old people on shore; I am also
satisfied that at sea on a second voyage they would be pleasanter,
somewhat, than they were on our grand excursion, and so I say without
hesitation that I would be glad enough to sail with them again. I could
at least enjoy life with my handful of old friends. They could enjoy
life with their cliques as well--passengers invariably divide up into
cliques, on all ships.

And I will say, here, that I would rather travel with an excursion party
of Methuselahs than have to be changing ships and comrades constantly, as
people do who travel in the ordinary way. Those latter are always
grieving over some other ship they have known and lost, and over other
comrades whom diverging routes have separated from them. They learn to
love a ship just in time to change it for another, and they become
attached to a pleasant traveling companion only to lose him. They have
that most dismal experience of being in a strange vessel, among strange
people who care nothing about them, and of undergoing the customary
bullying by strange officers and the insolence of strange servants,
repeated over and over again within the compass of every month. They
have also that other misery of packing and unpacking trunks--of running
the distressing gauntlet of custom-houses--of the anxieties attendant
upon getting a mass of baggage from point to point on land in safety.
I had rasher sail with a whole brigade of patriarchs than suffer so.
We never packed our trunks but twice--when we sailed