We had fifteen passengers, and to show how hard pressed they were at last for occupation and amusement, I will mention that the gentlemen gave a good part of their time every day, during the calm, to trying to sit on an empty champagne bottle (lying on its side), and thread a needle without touching their heels to the deck, or falling over; and the ladies sat in the shade of the mainsail, and watched the enterprise with absorbing interest.

We were at sea five Sundays; and yet, but for the almanac, we never would have known but that all the other days were Sundays too.
I was home again, in San Francisco, without means and without employment.
I tortured my brain for a saving scheme of some kind, and at last a public lecture occurred to me! I sat down and wrote one, in a fever of hopeful anticipation.

I showed it to several friends, but they all shook their heads.

They said nobody would come to hear me, and I would make a humiliating failure of it.
They said that as I had never spoken in public, I would break down in the delivery, anyhow.

I was disconsolate now.