ience of my life. Already the
temporary discomforts produced by heat and soiled garments had faded
into insignificance, and assumed a most trivial aspect when I reviewed
the journey as a whole. They were part of the game. To again quote
"Trilby," tramping "is not all beer and skittles." Your true tramp
learns to take things as he finds them and never to expect or ask or
the impossible. He will drink the wine of the country, even when sour,
without a grimace; pass without grumbling a sleepless night; plod
through dust ankle deep, without a murmur; there is but one vulnerable
feature in his armor, and with Achilles, it is his heel! And it is
literally the heel that, is the sensitive spot. I will venture the
assertion that the long-distance tramper--not even excepting Brother
Weston--who has not at some time or another suffered from sore heels,
does not exist. The tramp's feet are his means of locomotion; on their
condition he bestows an anxiety and care which far surpass that of the
man in the automobile, with all his complicated machinery to inspect.

Remains then, the memory of the delicious, faint, cool, morning
breeze, gently stirring the pine needles; the aromatic odor of forest
undergrowth; the murmur of the stream hurrying down the mountain gorge
to mingle its pure waters with those of the muddy Sacramento, far
away in the great valley below; the deep awe-inspiring canons of the
American, Stanislaus and Mokelumne Rivers; and back of all, the azure
summits of the Sierra Nevada.

Remains also, the memory of the kindly-disposed, courteous and
open-hearted inhabitants of the old mining towns. But more forcibly than
all else combined--for it seems to epitomize the whole--the glamour of
the towns themselves appeals with an irresistible fascination, that no
poor words of mine can adequately express.

Appendix

Views of the Bret Harte Country

Here ends A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country by Thomas Dykes
Beasley. Published by Paul Elder and Company and printed for them at
their Tomoye Press in the city of San Francisco, under the direction of
John Swart, in the year Nineteen Hundred and Fourteen

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country, by
Thomas Dykes Beasley

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