Chapter LX: Epilogue

This tale will be hard to swallow, because truth is stronger than fiction.

The trip was more healthful for Pod than for me.

There are four distinct distances across the American continent, viz:

Three thousand miles as the crow flies.

Three thousand five hundred as the train steams.

Four thousand by overland trail for a man.

A million miles as a donkey goes.

The most monotonous constant companion for a long journey is a man.

There are more people who descend to the level of a jackass than donkeys that rise to the plane of man.

If Pye Pod had been killed or drowned, or had died on the journey he would have been condemned and ridiculed as a fool by the same people who now applaud and envy him for his achievement.

If I had died on the first day of the trip the world would have called me lucky; now that I lived through it, I'm d----d lucky!

M. A'R.

TRANSCRIBER ENDNOTE:

End-of-line hyphens have been retained or discarded to maintain internal consistency, when possible.

In table of contents, for page 213, "XXVII." changed to "XXVIII." For page 219 entry, "Accross" changed to "Across".

Page 49: in "he did it them.", "them" to "then".

Page 50: the quotation mark at the end of the paragraph that ends with "[...] to his quarters." has no obvious mate, unless at the beginning of the paragraph on page 49 "Those who were not 'let in' to [...]" If so, then this would be a long quotation containing five paragraphs, with only two quotation marks, other than embedded short quotations. It has been formatted (e.g. by indentation) as such herein.

Some instances of the odd use of quotation marks have been retained. Others--which seemed clearly wrong or misleading, have been changed. Some were changed silently, but a few of these are listed below.

Page 102: one "the" removed from "visiting the homes of the the great".

Page 107: "protographs" to "photographs".

Page 109: "into his hay loft.." to "into his hay loft." Similar corrections on page 121 and 126. Also fixed a double comma on page 255.

Page 120: "semed" to "seemed".

Page 130: "Exixer" to "Elixir". Missing quotation mark inserted after "moral?".

Page 166: "accompained" to "accompanied".

Page 173: period added to the end of "The topography of the country varied but little".

Page 190: period added to end of paragraph.

Page 193: quotation mark with no mate removed from start of paragraph beginning with "I did not discuss further".

Page 200: quotation mark with no mate removed from "I recalled how I had been swindled [...]".

Page 211: "wheeel" to "wheel".

Page 212: in "caught the animated beg before it", "beg" to "bag".

Page 216: missing quotation mark inserted for "a pity to have [...]".

Page 218: "Fnally" to "Finally".

Page 224: "smaal" to "small".

Page 246: excess quotation mark removed after "companion.".

Page 253: "Hhat" to "That".

Page 258: "I thing the whole" to "I think the whole".

Page 260: "Buy" to "But".

Page 278: "comething" to "something". Also, "house" to "hours".

Page 308: missing quotation mark inserted. Also in illustration facing page 312.

Page 313: missing "it" inserted.

Page 341: quotation mark inserted after "patient.".

Page 376: "I answered. coarsely," to "I answered coarsely,".

Page 377: quotation mark inserted after "of water,".

Page 381: "to save him-" to "to save himself."

Page 410: missing quotation mark inserted before "Ain't nobody livin'". Also, extraneous single quote deleted after "blasted cat,". Also, "wasn"t" to "wasn't".

In this text version, italics that originally served specifically for emphasis have been converted to uppercase. Small-caps text has also been represented by uppercase. Italics that seemed merely to set off titles, words or phrases from the context have been _marked with underscores_ before and after.