Chapter X: Conclusion

I have now given to my readers the full substance of all the notes I have made on the various organs I have seen, and regret that they were not all taken so systematically as I could have wished, for when I began them, they were simply memoranda, to assist my own recollection, and I had no intention of ever publishing them. But as my note book kept filling with accounts of organs, and my portfolio with sketches, I could but feel that I should like others to have the use of the information I had accumulated. My descriptions are simply taken from what I saw, and not extracts from books, or the accounts of friends, and the sketches have all been made on the spot, no doubt with some errors, but still the evidence of an eye-witness is better than second-hand information, gathered from sources that may be sometimes inaccurate, and, being copied over and over again, come to be handed down as facts. Should this little work in any way tend towards the improvement of THE ORGAN, I shall be amply repaid for the time and trouble spent upon it.

Transcriber’s Notes

Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they were not changed.

Simple typographical errors were corrected; unbalanced quotation marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left unbalanced.

The Frontispiece is in its original position. The other illustrations have been moved to immediately follow their descriptive notes.

In the List of Illustrations, the page numbers 22-24 were unreadable and the page numbers 25-27 were printed incorrectly as 28-29. Transcriber has corrected both of these errors. In versions of this eBook that support hyperlinks, the page references lead to the corresponding illustrations; the visible numbers are just ranges.

Inconsistent punctuation in the captions of illustrations has been retained.

The index near the beginning of the book was not checked for proper alphabetization or correct page references.

The caption “ST. WOLFRAM--ABBESVILLE” was spelled as “ST. WOLPAM-ABBESVILLE” in the original book, and has been changed here to be consistent with the spelling of that name in the rest of the book.