Short Fiction (Unabridged)

What more glorious than to open for one’s self a new career—to appear suddenly before the learned world with a book of discoveries in one’s hand, like an unlooked-for comet blazing in the empyrean! No longer will I keep my book in obscurity. Behold it, gentlemen; read it! I have undertaken and performed a forty-two days’ journey round my room. The interesting observations I have made, and the constant pleasure I have experienced all along the road, made me wish to publish my travels; the certainty of being useful decided the matter.