The following morning I took the train for my home in Alameda. As I sat and meditated on the scenes I had witnessed and the character of the people I had met, it was borne in upon me that this had been the most interesting as well as enjoyable experience 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