k, we felt as a
returning wanderer feels when he sees his home. When we stepped on
board, our cares vanished, our troubles were at an end--for the ship was
home to us. We always had the same familiar old state-room to go to, and
feel safe and at peace and comfortable again.

I have no fault to find with the manner in which our excursion was
conducted. Its programme was faithfully carried out--a thing which
surprised me, for great enterprises usually promise vastly more than they
perform. It would be well if such an excursion could be gotten up every
year and the system regularly inaugurated. Travel is fatal to prejudice,
bigotry and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on
these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things can
not be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's
lifetime.

The Excursion is ended, and has passed to its place among the things that
were. But its varied scenes and its manifold incidents will linger
pleasantly in our memories for many a year to come. Always on the wing,
as we were, and merely pausing a moment to catch fitful glimpses of the
wonders of half a world, we could not hope to receive or retain vivid
impressions of all it was our fortune to see. Yet our holyday flight has
not been in vain--for above the confusion of vague recollections, certain
of its best prized pictures lift themselves and will still continue
perfect in tint and outline after their surroundings shall have faded
away.

We shall remember something of pleasant France; and something also of
Paris, though it flashed upon us a splendid meteor, and was gone again,
we hardly knew how or where. We shall remember, always, how we saw
majestic Gibraltar glorified with the rich coloring of a Spanish sunset
and swimming in a sea of rainbows. In fancy we shall see Milan again,
and her stately Cathedral with its marble wilderness of graceful spires.
And Padua--Verona--Como, jeweled with stars; and patrician Venice, afloat
on her stagnant flood--silent, desolate, haughty--scornful of her humbled
state--wrapping herself in memories of her lost fleets, of battle and
triumph, and all the pageantry of a glory that is departed.

We can not forget Florence--Naples--nor the foretaste of heaven that is
in the delicious atmosphere of Greece--and surely not Athens and the
broken temples of the Acropolis. Surely not venerable Rome--nor the
green plain that compasses he