Chapter LXXVIII - LXXIX Summary

After six months, the narrator returns to San Francisco. The boat slowly drifts back to the West Coast for a few weeks, which feels like an extended Sunday to the travelers. In San Francisco, the narrator is once again penniless and jobless. He decides to start giving public lectures. He borrows enough money to rent a new opera-house for three consecutive days and to produce advertisement. Riddled with doubts, he gives his first lecture to a packed house and the enterprise turns out to be a complete success.

After establishing his new business as a public speaker, the narrator hires an agent and starts giving lectures in various cities in and around the West Coast. On a cold night following a lecture in Virginia, he encounters a band of highway bandits that try to steal his money...