Thus what he gives us is something very
different
from a
photograph.
photograph.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v12 - Gre to Hen
A good example of his
polemical power is the book in which he and Herbert Spencer took
up a lance for their opposing religious views. The controversy
appeared first in the Nineteenth Century in 1884, and the wide atten-
tion it attracted showed that the disputants were regarded as author-
itative exponents of their respective creeds.
Mr. Harrison has translated Comte's 'Social Statics. ' In history
his views are modern and liberal, while his style makes the expres-
sion of exceptional interest. Works in this field are,-"The Meaning
of History' (1862), Oliver Cromwell (1888), 'Annals of an Old
Manor-House' (1893), and 'The Study of History' (1895). Other books
are-Order and Progress' (1875), and The Choice of Books, and Other
Literary Pieces' (1886). The essay on The Choice of Books' has
always been popular, and is distinguished by a fine culture, independ-
ence of judgment, good sense, and happy presentation.
THE USE AND SELECTION OF BOOKS
From The Choice of Books, and Other Literary Pieces >
T IS most right that in the great republic of letters there should
be freedom of intercourse and a spirit of equality. Every
reader who holds a book in his hand is free of the inmost
minds of men past and present; their lives both within and with-
out the pale of their uttered thoughts are unveiled to him; he
needs no introduction to the greatest; he stands on no ceremony
with them; he may, if he be so minded, scribble "doggerel" on
his Shelley, or he may kick Lord Byron, if he please, into a
corner. He hears Burke perorate, and Johnson dogmatize, and
Scott tell his border tales, and Wordsworth muse on the hillside,
without the leave of any man or the payment of any toll. In the
republic of letters there are no privileged orders or places re-
served. Every man who has written a book, even the diligent Mr.
Whitaker, is in one sense an author; "a book's a book although
there's nothing in't;" and every man who can decipher a penny
journal is in one sense a reader. And your "general reader,"
like the grave-digger in Hamlet, is hail-fellow with all the mighty
dead: he pats the skull of the jester, batters the cheek of lord,
## p. 6977 (#365) ###########################################
FREDERIC HARRISON
6977
lady, or courtier, and uses "imperious Cæsar" to teach boys the
Latin declensions.
But this noble equality of all writers-of all writers and of
all readers—has a perilous side to it. It is apt to make us in-
discriminate in the books we read, and somewhat contemptuous
of the mighty men of the past. Men who are most observant as
to the friends they make or the conversation they share, are
carelessness itself as to the books to whom they intrust them-
selves and the printed language with which they saturate their
Yet can any friendship or society be more important to
us than that of the books which form so large a part of our
minds, and even of our characters? Do we in real life take any
pleasant fellow to our homes and chat with some agreeable ras-
cal by our firesides, we who will take up any pleasant fellow's
printed memoirs, we who delight in the agreeable rascal when
he is cut up into pages and bound in calf?
If any person given to reading were honestly to keep a regis-
ter of all the printed stuff that he or she consumes in a year,—
all the idle tales of which the very names and the story are for-
gotten in a week, the bookmaker's prattle about nothing at so
much a sheet, the fugitive trifling about silly things and empty
people, the memoirs of the unmemorable, and lives of those who
never really lived at all,-of what a mountain of rubbish would
it be the catalogue! Exercises for the eye and the memory, as
mechanical as if we set ourselves to learn the names, ages, and
family histories of every one who lives in our street; the flirta-
tions of their maiden aunts; and the circumstances surrounding
the birth of their grandmother's first baby.
It is impossible to give any method to our reading till we get
nerve enough to reject. The most exclusive and careful amongst
us will (in literature) take boon companions out of the street, as
easily as an idler in a tavern. "I came across such-and-such a
book that I never heard mentioned," says one, "and found it
curious, though entirely worthless. "-"I strayed on a volume by
I know not whom, on a subject for which I never cared. " And
so on. There are curious and worthless creatures enough in any
pot-house all day long; and there is incessant talk in omnibus,
train, or street by we know not whom, about we care not what.
Yet if a printer and a bookseller can be induced to make this
gabble as immortal as print and publication can make it, then it
straightway is literature, and in due time it becomes "curious. "
XII-437
―――
## p. 6978 (#366) ###########################################
6978
FREDERIC HARRISON
I have no intention to moralize or to indulge in a homily
against the reading of what is deliberately evil. There is not so
much need for this now, and I am not discoursing on the whole
duty of man. I take that part of our reading which by itself is
no doubt harmless, entertaining, and even gently instructive.
But of this enormous mass of literature how much deserves to
be chosen out, to be preferred to all the great books of the
world, to be set apart for those precious hours which are all that
the most of us can give to solid reading? The vast proportion
of books are books that we shall never be able to read. A seri-
ous percentage of books are not worth reading at all. The really
vital books for us we also know to be a very trifling portion of
the whole. And yet we act as if every book were as good as
any other, as if it were merely a question of order which we
take up first, as if any book were good enough for us, and as if
all were alike honorable, precious, and satisfying. Alas! books
cannot be more than the men who write them; and as a fair pro-
portion of the human race now write books, with motives and
objects as various as human activity, books as books are entitled
à priori, until their value is proved, to the same attention and
respect as houses, steam-engines, pictures, fiddles, bonnets, and
other products of human industry. In the shelves of those
libraries which are our pride, libraries public or private, circu-
lating or very stationary, are to be found those great books of
the world rari nantes in gurgite vasto, those books which are
truly "the precious life-blood of a master spirit. " But the very
familiarity which their mighty fame has bred in us makes us
indifferent; we grow weary of what every one is supposed to have
read; and we take down something which looks a little eccentric,
some worthless book, on the mere ground that we never heard
of it before.
Thus the difficulties of literature are in their way as great as
those of the world; the obstacles to finding the right friends are
as great, the peril is as great of being lost in a Babel of voices.
and an ever-changing mass of beings. Books are not wiser than
men; the true books are not easier to find than the true men;
the bad books or the vulgar books are not less obtrusive and not
less ubiquitous than the bad or vulgar men are everywhere; the
art of right reading is as long and difficult to learn as the art of
right living. Those who are on good terms with the first author
they meet, run as much risk as men who surrender their time to
## p. 6979 (#367) ###########################################
FREDERIC HARRISON
6979
the first passer in the street; for to be open to every book is for
the most part to gain as little as possible from any.
A man
aimlessly wandering about in a crowded city is of all men the
most lonely so he who takes up only the books that he "comes
across" is pretty certain to meet but few that are worth know-
ing.
In
Now this danger is one to which we are specially exposed in
this age.
Our high-pressure life of emergencies, our whirling
industrial organization or disorganization, have brought us in this
(as in most things) their peculiar difficulties and drawbacks.
almost everything, vast opportunities and gigantic means of mul-
tiplying our products bring with them new perils and troubles
which are often at first neglected. Our huge cities, where wealth
is piled up and the requirements and appliances of life extended
beyond the dreams of our forefathers, seem to breed in them-
selves new forms of squalor, disease, blights, or risks to life, such
as we are yet unable to master. So the enormous multiplicity of
modern books is not altogether favorable to the knowing of the
best. I listen with mixed satisfaction to the pæans that they
chant over the works which issue from the press each day: how
the books poured forth from Paternoster Row might in a few
years be built into a pyramid that would fill the dome of St.
Paul's. How in this mountain of literature am I to find the
really useful book? How, when I have found it and found its
value, am I to get others to read it? How am I to keep my
head clear in the torrent and di of works, all of which distract
my attention, most of which promise me something, whilst so
few fulfill that promise? The Nile is the source of the Egyp-
tian's bread, and without it he perishes of hunger. But the Nile
may be rather too liberal in his flood, and then the Egyptian
runs imminent risk of drowning.
And thus there never was a time, at least during the last two
hundred years, when the difficulties in the way of making an
efficient use of books were greater than they are to-day, when
the obstacles were more real between readers and the right
books to read, when it was practically so troublesome to find out
that which it is of vital importance to know; and that not by
the dearth, but by the plethora of printed matter.
For it comes
to nearly the same thing, whether we are actually debarred by
physical impossibility from getting the right book into our hand,
or whether we are choked off from the right book by the
## p. 6980 (#368) ###########################################
6980
FREDERIC HARRISON
obtrusive crowd of the wrong books: so that it needs a strong
character and a resolute system of reading to keep the head cool
in the storm of literature around us. We read nowadays in the
market-place; I should rather say in some large steam factory of
letter-press, where damp sheets of new print whirl round us per-
petually; if it be not rather some noisy book fair where literary
showmen tempt us with performing dolls, and the gongs of rival
booths are stunning our ears from morn till night. Contrast with
this pandemonium of Leipsic and Paternoster Row the sublime
picture of our Milton in his early retirement at Horton, when,
musing over his coming flight to the epic heaven, practicing his
pinions, as he tells Diodati, he consumed five years of solitude in
reading the ancient writers-
"Et totum rapiunt me, mea vita, libri. "
Who now reads the ancient writers? Who systematically reads
the great writers, be they ancient or modern, whom the consent
of ages has marked out as classics: typical, immortal, peculiar
teachers of our race? Alas! the 'Paradise Lost' is lost again to
us beneath an inundation of graceful academic verse, sugary
stanzas of ladylike prettiness, and ceaseless explanations in more
or less readable prose of what John Milton meant or did not
mean, or what he saw or did not see, who married his great-
aunt, and why Adam or Satan is like that or unlike the other.
We read a perfect library about the 'Paradise Lost,' but the
'Paradise Lost' itself we do not read.
I am not presumptuous enough to assert that the larger part
of modern literature is not worth reading in itself, that the prose
is not readable, entertaining, one may say highly instructive.
Nor do I pretend that the verses which we read so zealously in
place of Milton's are not good verses. On the contrary, I think
them sweetly conceived, as musical and as graceful as the verse
of any age in our history. A great deal of our modern literature
is such that it is exceedingly difficult to resist it, and it is unde-
niable that it gives us real information. It seems perhaps un-
reasonable to many to assert that a decent readable book which
gives us actual instruction can be otherwise than a useful com-
panion and a solid gain. Possibly many people are ready to cry
out upon me as an obscurantist for venturing to doubt a genial
confidence in all literature simply as such. But the question
which weighs upon me with such really crushing urgency is this:
## p. 6981 (#369) ###########################################
FREDERIC HARRISON
6981
What are the books that in our little remnant of reading-time it
is most vital for us to know? For the true use of books is of
such sacred value to us that to be simply entertained is to cease
to be taught, elevated, inspired by books; merely to gather in-
formation of a chance kind is to close the mind to knowledge of
the urgent kind.
Every book that we take up without a purpose is an oppor-
tunity lost of taking up a book with a purpose; every bit of
stray information which we cram into our heads without any
sense of its importance, is for the most part a bit of the most
useful information driven out of our heads and choked off from
our minds. It is so certain that information-i. e. , the knowl-
edge, the stored thoughts and observations of mankind-is now
grown to proportions so utterly incalculable and prodigious, that
even the learned whose lives are given to study can but pick up
some crumbs that fall from the table of truth. They delve and
tend but a plot in that vast and teeming kingdom, whilst those
whom active life leaves with but a few cramped hours of study
can hardly come to know the very vastness of the field before
them, or how infinitesimally small is the corner they can traverse
at the best. We know all is not of equal value. We know that
books differ in value as much as diamonds differ from the sand
on the sea-shore, as much as our living friend differs from a
dead rat. We know that much in the myriad-peopled world of
books very much in all kinds-is trivial, enervating, inane, even
noxious. And thus, where we have infinite opportunities of wast-
ing our efforts to no end, of fatiguing our minds without enrich-
ing them, of clogging the spirit without satisfying it,— there, I
cannot but think, the very infinity of opportunities is robbing us
of the actual power of using them. And thus I come often, in
my less hopeful moods, to watch the remorseless cataract of daily
literature which thunders over the remnants of the past, as if it
were a fresh impediment to the men of our day in the way of
systematic knowledge and consistent powers of thought; as if it
were destined one day to overwhelm the great inheritance of
mankind in prose and verse.
And so, I say it most confidently,- the first intellectual task
of our age is rightly to order and make serviceable the vast realm
of printed material which four centuries have swept across our
path. To organize our knowledge, to systematize our reading, to
save out of the relentless cataract of ink the immortal thoughts
―
## p. 6982 (#370) ###########################################
6982
FREDERIC HARRISON
of the greatest,—this is a necessity, unless the productive inge-
nuity of man is to lead us at last to a measureless and pathless
chaos. To know anything that turns up is, in the infinity of
knowledge, to know nothing. To read the first book we come
across, in the wilderness of books, is to learn nothing. To turn
over the pages of ten thousand volumes is to be practically in-
different to all that is good. .
«<
<<
>>>>
>>
But how are we to know the best; how are we to gain this
definite idea of the vast world of letters? There are some who
appear to suppose that the best >>
are known only to experts in
an esoteric way, who may reveal to inquirers what schoolboys and
betting men describe as "tips. "
tips. " There are no "tips" in liter-
ature; the "best" authors are never dark horses; we need no
"crammers" and coaches to thrust us into the presence of the
great writers of all time. "Crammers will only lead us wrong.
It is a thing far easier and more common than many imagine, to
discover the best. It needs no research, no learning, and is only
misguided by recondite information. The world has long ago
closed the great assize of letters, and judged the first places
everywhere. In such a matter the judgment of the world,
guided and informed by a long succession of accomplished crit-
ics, is almost unerring. When some Zoïlus finds blemishes in
Homer, and prefers, it may be, the work of some Apollonius of
his own discovering, we only laugh. There may be doubts about
the third and the fourth rank; but the first and the second are
hardly open to discussion. The gates which lead to the Elysian
Fields may slowly wheel back on their adamantine hinges to
admit now and then some new and chosen modern. But the
company of the masters of those who know, and in especial
degree of the great poets, is a roll long closed and complete,
and they who are of it hold ever peaceful converse together.
Hence we may find it a useful maxim that if our reading be
utterly closed to the great poems of the world, there is some-
thing amiss with our reading. If you find Milton, Dante, Cal-
deron, Goethe, so much "Hebrew-Greek" to you; if your Homer
and Virgil, your Molière and Scott, rest year after year undis-
turbed on their shelves beside your school trigonometry and your
old college text-books; if you have never opened the 'Cid,' the
'Nibelungen,' 'Crusoe,' and 'Don Quixote' since you were a
boy, and are wont to leave the Bible and the 'Imitation' for some
wet Sunday afternoon-know, friend, that your reading can do
## p. 6983 (#371) ###########################################
FREDERIC HARRISON
6983
you little real good. Your mental digestion is ruined or sadly
out of order. No doubt, to thousands of intelligent, educated
men who call themselves readers, the reading through a canto of
the 'Purgatorio' or a book of the 'Paradise Lost' is a task as
irksome as it would be to decipher an ill-written manuscript in a
language that is almost forgotten. But although we are not to
be always reading epics, and are chiefly in the mood for slighter
things, to be absolutely unable to read Milton or Dante with
enjoyment is to be in a very bad way. Aristophanes, Theocritus,
Boccaccio, Cervantes, Molière, are often as light as the driven
foam; but they are not light enough for the general reader.
Their humor is too bright and lovely for the groundlings. They
are, alas! "classics," somewhat apart from our every-day ways;
they are not banal enough for us: and so for us they slumber
"unknown in a long night," just because they are immortal poets
and are not scribblers of to-day.
When will men understand that the reading of great books is
a faculty to be acquired, not a natural gift, at least not to those
who are spoiled by our current education and habits of life?
Ceci tuera cela, the last great poet might have said of the first
circulating library. An insatiable appetite for new novels makes
it as hard to read a masterpiece as it seems to a Parisian boule-
vardier to live in a quiet country. Until a man can truly enjoy
a draught of clear water bubbling from a mountain-side, his taste
is in an unwholesome state. And so he who finds the Heliconian
spring insipid should look to the state of his nerves. Putting
aside the iced air of the difficult mountain-tops of epic, tragedy,
or psalm, there are some simple pieces which may serve as an
unerring test of a healthy or a vicious taste for imaginative work.
If the 'Cid,' the 'Vita Nuova,' the 'Canterbury Tales,' Shake-
speare's Sonnets,' and 'Lycidas' pall on a man; if he care not
for Malory's Morte d'Arthur' and the 'Red Cross Knight'; if he
thinks Crusoe' and the 'Vicar' books for the young; if he thrill
not with the 'Ode to the West Wind' and the Ode to a Grecian
Urn'; if he have no stomach for Christabel' or the lines written
on 'The Wye above Tintern Abbey,' he should fall on his
knees and pray for a cleanlier and quieter spirit.
(
The intellectual system of most of us in these days needs
"to purge and to live cleanly. " Only by such a course of treat-
ment shall we bring our minds to feel at peace with the grand
pure works of the world. Something we ought all to know of
-
## p. 6984 (#372) ###########################################
6984
FREDERIC HARRISON
the masterpieces of antiquity, and of the other nations of Europe.
To understand a great national poet such as Dante, Calderon,
Corneille, or Goethe, is to know other types of human civiliza-
tion in ways which a library of histories does not sufficiently
teach. The great masterpieces of the world are thus, quite apart
from the charm and solace they give us, the master instruments
of a solid education.
## p. 6984 (#373) ###########################################
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## p. 6985 (#377) ###########################################
6985
BRET HARTE
(1839-)
BY WILLIAM HENRY HUDSON
RANCIS BRET HARTE (from whose name, so far as pen purposes
are concerned, the Francis was long since dropped) was born
in Albany, New York, August 25th, 1839. After an ordinary
school education he went in 1854 to California, - drawn thither, like so
many other ambitious youths, by the gold excitement and the pros-
pects of fortune. At first he tried his hand at teaching and mining,
and had ample opportunity to study in close contact the wild frontier.
life which he was afterwards to portray. Unsuccessful in both lines
of experiment, he presently entered a printing-office, and in 1857 was
in San Francisco as compositor on the Golden Era. Unsigned sketches
from his pen soon after this began to attract notice, and he was
invited to join the staff of the Californian, to which he contributed a
series of clever parodies on the styles and methods of famous con-
temporary writers of fiction, subsequently published in volume form
under the title 'Condensed Novels. ' Meanwhile, in 1864, Mr. Harte
had been made secretary of the U. S. Branch Mint; and during his
six-years' tenure of office he produced some of his best known poems,
— 'John Burns of Gettysburg,' 'The Pliocene Skull,' and 'The Society
upon the Stanislaus' among the number. In 1868 the Overland
Monthly was started, with Mr. Harte as editor. It was now that he
began in a systematic way to work up the material furnished by his
earlier frontier life. The first result was 'The Luck of Roaring
Camp,' which upon its appearance in the second number of the mag-
azine instantly made its mark, and was accepted as heralding the
rise of a new star in the literary heavens. No other prose production
of its author has enjoyed greater popularity, though as a work of art
it will hardly bear comparison with such stories as 'Miggles,' 'Ten-
nessee's Partner,' and 'The Outcasts of Poker Flat,' which followed
in rapid succession, and the last-named of which is generally consid-
ered the most perfect of his works. In 1871 Mr. Harte settled in
New York, and became a regular contributor to the Atlantic Monthly.
In 1878 he was appointed United States consul in Crefeld, Germany,
whence in 1880 he was removed to the more lucrative post in Glasgow.
Since then he has resided abroad, principally in England, where his
-
## p. 6986 (#378) ###########################################
6986
BRET HARTE
books have enjoyed wide popularity. His pen has remained active;
but despite long absence from the land out of whose life his initial
successes were wrought, he has continued for the most part to deal
with the old California themes, remaining facile princeps in a field in
which he now has many imitators. That he has ever done anything
quite so good as his first group of stories and poems cannot be said,
for he has undoubtedly paid the penalty of working an exhausted
soil, and his later volumes are marked as a whole by the repetition of
well-worn motives and by declining spontaneity and power. Hence
it is by his earlier writings that he will always be known. Still, the
average quality of his output has remained unusually high; and when
the circumstances of its production are borne in mind, it may per-
haps seem remarkable that it should have preserved so many traces
of the writer's youthful freshness and vigor.
In estimating Mr. Harte's work, allowance has of course to be
made for the fact that it was his rare good fortune to break new
ground, and to become the first literary interpreter of a life which
with its primitive breadth and freedom, its unconventionality and
picturesqueness, its striking contrasts of circumstance and character,
offered singular opportunities to the novelist. But appreciation of
this point must not lead us to underrate the strength and certainty
with which the chance of the moment was seized on and turned to
use. In the last analysis the secret of Mr. Harte's success will be
found to inhere not so much in the novelty of the people and inci-
dents described, as in the sterling qualities of his own genius and
art.
Among such qualities, those which perhaps most constantly impress
the critical reader of his total work are his splendid dramatic in-
stinct, his keen insight into character, his broad sympathy, and his
subtle and pervasive humor. In his handling of certain of the more
commonplace comic types, he frequently reveals the strong early
influence of Dickens, whose familiar method is to be detected for
instance in Sal, Mrs. Markle, and even Colonel Starbottle of 'Gabriel
Conroy,' and of whom we are often unexpectedly reminded here and
there in the author's more distinctive studies. But at his best, and
in his own particular field,—in such characters as the gamblers Ham-
lin and Oakhurst, Tennessee's Partner, Kentuck, Miggles, M'liss, Olly,
and many others, from his earlier stories especially,- Mr. Harte is
altogether himself. Dealing for the most part with large, strongly
marked, elemental types, as these develop and express themselves
under conditions which give free play to instinct and passion, he does
not indulge in lengthy analyses or detailed descriptions. His men
and women are sketched with a few bold firm strokes, and are left
to work out their own personalities in speech and deed; and yet, such
## p. 6987 (#379) ###########################################
BRET HARTE
6987
is the skill with which this is accomplished that they stand out
before us as creatures of real flesh and blood, whom we unquestion-
ingly, even if sometimes against our cooler judgment, accept and
believe in. Mr. Harte does not purposely soften the shadows in his
pictures; the baseness and extravagance, the sin and wretchedness, of
frontier life are frankly portrayed, as well as its rough chivalry and
its crude romance. None the less, there can be little doubt that con-
sciously or unconsciously he has contrived to throw an idealizing
glamor over the fret and fever, the squalor and misery, of the mine
and the camp, and that many of his most lifelike and successful charac-
ters are wrought in the imagination, though out of the stuff of fact.
His place is emphatically not among the realists, realistic as much of
his work undoubtedly is; for the shaping power of dramatic genius
molds and fashions the raw material furnished by experience and ob-
servation. That to take a single example - the reprobate Hamlin
had no counterpart or original in actual life, is altogether improbable;
yet it is certain that in the picture as we have it, much, perhaps
very much, is attributable to the cunning and delicacy of the artist's
hand.
Thus what he gives us is something very different from a
photograph. But it is just here that we touch upon what is perhaps
one of the finest qualities of his work,- a quality not to be separated
from his tendency towards idealization. Rarely falling into the didac-
tic, and dwelling habitually upon life's unexplained and inexplicable
tragic complexities, he nevertheless suffuses his stories with an atmos-
phere of charity, eminently clear, sweet, and wholesome. His char-
acteristic men and women, products of rude conditions, are generally
rough and often positively vicious; but he succeeds in convincing his
readers of their common humanity, and in showing the keen respon-
siveness to nobler influences still possessed by hearts which, super-
ficially considered, might well seem hopelessly callous and dead. And
he does this simply and naturally, without maudlin sentiment or
forced rhetoric-without, in a word, playing to the gallery.
The weakness of Mr. Harte's writing is closely connected with
some of its main elements of strength. A master of condensed and
rapid narration, he has produced many stories which are too episodi-
cal in character and sketchy in method to be completely satisfac-
tory from the artistic point of view; while in his desire to achieve
terseness, he occasionally sacrifices clearness of plot.
This is par-
ticularly the case with his more ambitious efforts, especially with his
long novel 'Gabriel Conroy,' an elaborate study of the culture condi-
tions of early California civilization. The book has many admirable
points. It abounds in memorable descriptions, vivid and humorous
character sketches, and separate scenes of remarkable power. But it
lacks wholeness, proportion, lucidity. It is a bundle of episodes, and
## p. 6988 (#380) ###########################################
6988
BRET HARTE
these episodes do not hang together; its plot is unduly intricate;
while the conduct of the story everywhere shows the author's inabil-
ity to hold in hand and weave into definite pattern the multitudinous
threads indispensable to his design. Undoubtedly written under the
influence of the huge novels of Dickens, the contrast that it presents
on the structural side with such an orderly and well-sustained work
as 'Bleak House is almost painful.
As a writer of verse Mr. Harte is unequal. Some of his humorous
poetry is too racy and original to be lost; much on the other hand is
too temporary and extravagant to find an abiding place in literature.
His best verse, artistically considered, is perhaps to be sought in his
wonderfully dramatic monologues in dialect. Jim' and 'In the Tun-
nel' are masterpieces of this kind; while Plain Language from
Truthful James' (currently known as The Heathen Chinee'), though
it owed much of its original vogue to local and accidental circum-
stances, must remain secure of a distinct place in American verse.
Пешу
William Henry Hudson
The following poems are all taken from The Poetical Works of Bret Harte,'
copyright 1882 by Houghton, Mifflin & Co. , Boston, and are reprinted
by special arrangement with the publishers.
JIM
AY there! P'r'aps
Some on you chaps
SA
Might know Jim Wild?
-
no offense:
Well,-
Thar ain't no sense
In gittin' riled!
Jim was my chum
Up on the Bar:
That's why I come
Down from up yar,
Lookin' for Jim.
Thank ye, sir! You
Ain't of that crew,
Blest if you are!
Money? Not much:
That ain't my kind:
## p. 6989 (#381) ###########################################
BRET HARTE
6989
I ain't no such.
Rum? I don't mind,
Seein' it's you.
Well, this yer Jim,
Did you know him?
Jess 'bout your size;
Same kind of eyes;
Well, that is strange:
Why, it's two year
Since he came here,
Sick, for a change.
Well, here's to us:
Eh?
The h you say!
Dead?
That little cuss?
What makes you star',
You over thar?
Can't a man drop
'S glass in yer shop
But you must rar'?
It wouldn't take
D- much to break
You and your bar.
Dead!
Poor-little- Jim!
Why, thar was me,
Jones, and Bob Lee,
Harry and Ben,-
No-account men:
Then to take him!
Well, thar, good-by-
No more, sir—I—
Eh?
What's that you say?
Why, dern it! -sho! -
No? Yes! By Joe!
Sold!
Sold! Why, you limb,
You ornery,
Derned old
Long-legged Jim!
-
## p. 6990 (#382) ###########################################
6990
BRET HARTE
DOW'S FLAT
(1856)
Dow's
ow's FLAT. That's its name;
And I reckon that you
Are a stranger? The same?
Well, I thought it was true,-
For thar isn't a man on the river as can't spot the place at first view.
It was called after Dow,
Which the same was an ass;
And as to the how
Thet the thing kem to pass,—
Jest tie up your hoss to that buckeye, and sit ye down here in the
grass.
You see this yer Dow
Hed the worst kind of luck;
He slipped up somehow
On each thing thet he struck.
Why, ef he'd a-straddled thet fence-rail, the derned thing 'ud get up
and buck.
He mined on the bar
Till he couldn't pay rates;
He was smashed by a car
When he tunneled with Bates;
And right on the top of his trouble kem his wife and five kids from
the States.
It was rough, mighty rough;
But the boys they stood by,
And they brought him the stuff
For a house, on the sly;
And the old woman,- well, she did washing, and took on when no
one was nigh.
But this yer luck of Dow's
Was so powerful mean
That the spring near his house
Dried right up on the green;
And he sunk forty feet down for water, but nary a drop to be seen.
Then the bar petered out,
And the boys wouldn't stay;
## p. 6991 (#383) ###########################################
BRET HARTE
6991
And the chills got about,
And his wife fell away;
But Dow in his well kept a-peggin' in his usual ridikilous way.
One day it was June,
And a year ago, jest
This Dow kem at noon
To his work like the rest,
With a shovel and pick on his shoulder, and a derringer hid in his
breast.
Let's see,
well,
And he stands on the brink,
He goes to th
And stops for a spell
Jest to listen and think:
For the sun in his eyes (jest like this, sir! ), you see, kinder made the
cuss blink.
His two ragged gals
In the gulch were at play,
And a gownd that was Sal's
Kinder flapped on a bay:
Not much for a man to be leavin', but his all,-
folks say.
And- That's a peart hoss
Thet you've got, ain't it now?
What might be her cost?
Eh? Oh! -
-
Well, then, Dow-
-
- well, that forty-foot grave wasn't his, sir, that day, anyhow.
For a blow of his pick
It was gold,-in the quartz,
And it ran all alike;
And I reckon five oughts
as I've heer'd the
Sorter caved in the side,
And he looked and turned sick,
Then he trembled and cried.
For you see the dern cuss had struck - "Water? " Beg your parding,
young man,-there you lied!
Thet's why it's Dow's Flat;
And the thing of it is
Was the worth of that strike;
And that house with the coopilow's his'n,- which the same isn't bad
for a Pike.
## p. 6992 (#384) ###########################################
6992
BRET HARTE
.
"
That he kinder got that
Through sheer contrairiness:
For 'twas water the derned cuss was seekin', and his luck made him
certain to miss.
Thet's so! Thar's your way,
To the left of yon tree;
But-a-look h'yur, say?
Won't you come up to tea?
No? Well then, the next time you're passin'; and ask after Dow-
and thet's me.
IN THE TUNNEL
IDN'T know Flynn,-
Flynn of Virginia,-
Long as he's been yar?
Look'ee here, stranger,
Whar hev you been?
-
Here in this tunnel
He was my pardner,
That same Tom Flynn,-
Working together,
In wind and weather,
Day out and in.
Didn't know Flynn!
Well, that is queer;
Why, it's a sin
To think of Tom Flynn,-
Tom with his cheer,
Tom without fear,-
Stranger, look yar!
Thar in the drift,
Back to the wall,
He held the timbers
Ready to fall;
Then in the darkness
I heard him call:
"Run for your life, Jake!
Run for your wife's sake!
Don't wait for me. "
## p. 6993 (#385) ###########################################
BRET HARTE
6993
And that was all
Heard in the din,
Heard of Tom Flynn,-
Flynn of Virginia.
That's all about
Flynn of Virginia.
That lets me out.
Here in the damp,
Out of the sun,
That 'ar derned lamp
Makes my eyes run.
Well, there, I'm done!
―
But, sir, when you'll
Hear the next fool
Asking of Flynn,
Flynn of Virginia,
Just you chip in,
Say you knew Flynn;
Say that you've been yar.
THE SOCIETY UPON THE STANISLAUS
RESIDE at Table Mountain, and my name is Truthful James;
I am not up to small deceit or any sinful games;
And I'll tell in simple language what I know about the row
That broke up our Society upon the Stanislow.
But first I would remark that it is not a proper plan
For any scientific gent to whale his fellow-man,
And if a member don't agree with his peculiar whim,
To lay for that same member for to "put a head" on him.
Now, nothing could be finer or more beautiful to see
Than the first six months' proceedings of that same Society,
Till Brown of Calaveras brought a lot of fossil bones
That he found within a tunnel near the tenement of Jones.
Then Brown he read a paper, and he reconstructed there,
From those same bones, an animal that was extremely rare;
And Jones then asked the Chair for a suspension of the rules,
Till he could prove that those same bones was one of his lost mules.
XII-438
## p. 6994 (#386) ###########################################
6994
BRET HARTE
#4
Then Brown he smiled a bitter smile, and said he was at fault. -
It seemed he had been trespassing on Jones's family vault.
He was a most sarcastic man, this quiet Mr. Brown,
And on several occasions he had cleaned out the town.
Now, I hold it is not decent for a scientific gent
To say another is an ass, at least, to all intent;
Nor should the individual who happens to be meant
Reply by heaving rocks at him, to any great extent.
-
Then Abner Dean of Angel's raised a point of order, when
A chunk of old red sandstone took him in the abdomen,
And he smiled a kind of sickly smile, and curled up on the floor,
And the subsequent proceedings interested him no more.
For in less time than I write it, every member did engage
In a warfare with the remnants of a paleozoic age;
And the way they heaved those fossils in their anger was a sin,
Till the skull of an old mammoth caved the head of Thompson in.
And this is all I have to say of these improper games,
For I live at Table Mountain, and my name is Truthful James;
And I've told in simple language what I knew about the row
That broke up our Society upon the Stanislow.
THOMPSON OF ANGEL'S
T IS the story of Thompson-of Thompson, the hero of Angel's.
Frequently drunk was Thompson, but always polite to the stran-
ger;
Light and free was the touch of Thompson upon his revolver;
Great the mortality incident on that lightness and freedom.
Yet not happy or gay was Thompson, the hero of Angel's;
Often spoke to himself in accents of anguish and sorrow:—
"Why do I make the graves of the frivolous youth who in folly
Thoughtlessly pass my revolver, forgetting its lightness and freedom?
"Why in my daily walks does the surgeon drop his left eyelid,
The undertaker smile, and the sculptor of gravestone marbles
Lean on his chisel and gaze? I care not o'ermuch for attention;
Simple am I in my ways, save for this lightness and freedom. "
So spake that pensive man- this Thompson, the hero of Angel's;
Bitterly smiled to himself, as he strode through the chapparal mus-
ing.
## p. 6995 (#387) ###########################################
BRET HARTE
6995
"Why, O why? " echoed the pines in the dark-olive depth far re-
sounding.
"Why, indeed? " whispered the sage-brush that bent 'neath his feet
non-elastic.
Pleasant indeed was that morn that dawned o'er the bar-room at An-
gel's,
Where in their manhood's prime was gathered the pride of the ham-
let.
Six "took sugar in theirs," and nine to the barkeeper lightly
Smiled as they said, "Well, Jim, you can give us our regular fusil. »
Suddenly as the gray hawk swoops down on the barn-yard, alighting
Where, pensively picking their corn, the favorite pullets are gathered,
So in that festive bar-room dropped Thompson, the hero of Angel's,
Grasping his weapon dread with his pristine lightness and freedom.
Never a word he spoke; divesting himself of his garments,
Danced the war-dance of the playful yet truculent Modoc,
Uttered a single whoop, and then in the accents of challenge
Spake, "Oh, behold in me a Crested Jay Hawk of the mountain. "
Then rose a pallid man a man sick with fever and ague;
Small was he, and his step was tremulous, weak, and uncertain;
Slowly a Derringer drew, and covered the person of Thompson;
Said in his feeblest pipe, "I'm a Bald-headed Snipe of the Valley. "
As on its native plains the kangaroo, startled by hunters,
Leaps with successive bounds, and hurries away to the thickets,
So leaped the Crested Hawk, and quietly hopping behind him
Ran, and occasionally shot, that Bald-headed Snipe of the Valley.
Vain at the festive bar still lingered the people of Angel's,
Hearing afar in the woods the petulant pop of the pistol;
Never again returned the Crested Jay Hawk of the mountains,
Never again was seen the Bald-headed Snipe of the Valley.
Yet in the hamlet of Angel's, when truculent speeches are uttered,
When bloodshed and life alone will atone for some trifling misstate-
ment,
Maidens and men in their prime recall the last hero of Angel's,
Think of and vainly regret the Bald-headed Snipe of the Valley!
## p. 6996 (#388) ###########################################
6996
BRET HARTE
PLAIN LANGUAGE FROM TRUTHFUL JAMES
TABLE MOUNTAIN
WHIC
HICH I wish to remark,
And my language is plain,
That for ways that are dark,
And for tricks that are vain,
The heathen Chinee is peculiar,
Which the same I would rise to explain.
Ah Sin was his name;
And I shall not deny,
In regard to the same,
What that name might imply;
But his smile it was pensive and childlike,
As I frequent remarked to Bill Nye.
It was August the third,
And quite soft was the skies;
Which it might be inferred
That Ah Sin was likewise;
Yet he played it that day upon William
And me in a way I despise.
Which we had a small game,
And Ah Sin took a hand;
was euchre: the same
He did not understand;
But he smiled as he sat by the table
With a smile that was childlike and bland.
Yet the cards they were stocked
In a way that I grieve,
And my feelings were shocked
At the state of Nye's sleeve,
Which was stuffed full of aces and bowers,
And the same with intent to deceive.
But the hands that were played
By that heathen Chinee,
And the points that he made,
Were quite frightful to see
Till at last he put down a right bower,
Which the same Nye had dealt unto me.
-
## p. 6997 (#389) ###########################################
BRET HARTE
6997
Then I looked up at Nye,
And he gazed upon me;
And he rose with a sigh,
And said, "Can this be?
We are ruined by Chinese cheap labor- »
And he went for that heathen Chinee.
In the scene that ensued
I did not take a hand,
But the floor it was strewed
Like the leaves on the strand
With the cards that Ah Sin had been hiding,
In the game "he did not understand. ”
B
In his sleeves, which were long,
He had twenty-four packs,—
Which was coming it strong,
Yet I state but the facts;
And we found on his nails, which were taper,
What is frequent in tapers- that's wax.
Which is why I remark,
And my language is plain,
That for ways that are dark
And for tricks that are vain,
The heathen Chinee is peculiar -
Which the same I am free to maintain.
From the Atlantic Monthly.
ON A CONE OF THE BIG TREES
(SEQUOIA GIGANTEA)
ROWN foundling of the Western wood,
Babe of primeval wildernesses!
Long on my table thou hast stood
Encounters strange and rude caresses;
Perchance contented with thy lot,
Surroundings new and curious faces,
As though ten centuries were not
Imprisoned in thy shining cases.
Thou bring'st me back the halcyon days
Of grateful rest, the week of leisure,
## p. 6998 (#390) ###########################################
6998
BRET HARTE
The journey lapped in autumn haze,
The sweet fatigue that seemed a pleasure,
The morning ride, the noonday halt,
The blazing slopes, the red dust rising,
And then the dim, brown, columned vault,
With its cool, damp, sepulchral spicing.
Once more I see the rocking masts
That scrape the sky, their only tenant
The jay-bird, that in frolic casts
From some high yard his broad blue pennant.
I see the Indian files that keep
Their places in the dusty heather,
Their red trunks standing ankle-deep
In moccasins of rusty leather.
I see all this, and marvel much
That thou, sweet woodland waif, art able
To keep the company of such
As throng thy friend's the poet's table:
The latest spawn the press hath cast,-
The "modern Popes," "the later Byrons,"
Why, e'en the best may not outlast
Thy poor relation Sempervirens !
Thy sire saw the light that shone
On Mohammed's uplifted crescent,
On many a royal gilded throne
And deed forgotten in the present;
He saw the age of sacred trees
And Druid groves and mystic larches;
And saw from forest domes like these
The builder bring his Gothic arches.
And must thou, foundling, still forego
Thy heritage and high ambition,
To lie full lowly and full low,
Adjusted to thy new condition?
Not hidden in the drifted snows,
But under ink-drops idly spattered,
And leaves ephemeral as those
That on thy woodland tomb were scattered?
## p. 6999 (#391) ###########################################
BRET HARTE
6999
DICKENS IN CAMP
BOVE the pines the moon was slowly drifting,
A The river sang below;
The dim Sierras, far beyond, uplifting
Their minarets of snow.
The roaring camp-fire, with rude humor, painted
The ruddy tints of health
On haggard face and form that drooped and fainted
In the fierce race for wealth;
Till one arose, and from his pack's scant treasure
A hoarded volume drew,
And cards were dropped from hands of listless leisure
To hear the tale anew.
And then, while round them shadows gathered faster,
And as the firelight fell,
He read aloud the book wherein the Master
Had writ of "Little Nell. "
Perhaps 'twas boyish fancy,- for the reader
Was youngest of them all,-
But, as he read, from clustering pine and cedar
A silence seemed to fall;
The fir-trees, gathering closer in the shadows,
Listened in every spray,
While the whole camp, with "Nell" on English meadows
Wandered and lost their way.
And so in mountain solitudes, o'ertaken
As by some spell divine,
Their cares dropped from them like the needles shaken
From out the gusty pine.
Lost is that camp and wasted all its fire:
And he who wrought that spell?
Ah! towering pine and stately Kentish spire,
Ye have one tale to tell!
Lost is that camp; but let its fragrant story
Blend with the breath that thrills
With hop-vine's incense all the pensive glory
That fills the Kentish hills.
## p. 7000 (#392) ###########################################
7000
BRET HARTE
And on that grave where English oak and holly
And laurel wreaths entwine,
Deem it not all a too presumptuous folly,—
This spray of Western pine!
AN HEIRESS OF RED DOG
From The Twins of Table Mountain, and Other Stories. Copyright 1879, by
Houghton, Osgood & Co. , Boston. Reprinted by special arrangement
with the publishers.
THE
HE first intimation given of the eccentricity of the testator
was, I think, in the spring of 1854. He was at that time.
in possession of a considerable property, heavily mortgaged
to one friend, and a wife of some attraction, on whose affections
another friend held an incumbering lien. One day it was found
that he had secretly dug, or caused to be dug, a deep trap before
the front door of his dwelling, into which a few friends in the
course of the evening casually and familiarly dropped. This cir-
cumstance, slight in itself, seemed to point to the existence of a
certain humor in the man, which might eventually get into liter-
ature; although his wife's lover-a man of quick discernment,
whose leg was broken by the fall-took other views. It was
some weeks later that while dining with certain other friends of
his wife, he excused himself from the table, to quietly reappear
at the front window with a three-quarter-inch hydraulic pipe,
and a stream of water projected at the assembled company. An
attempt was made to take public cognizance of this; but a major-
ity of the citizens of Red Dog who were not at dinner decided
that a man had a right to choose his own methods of diverting
his company. Nevertheless, there were some hints of his insan-
ity: his wife recalled other acts clearly attributable to dementia;
the crippled lover argued from his own experience that the integ-
rity of her limbs could only be secured by leaving her husband's
house; and the mortgagee, fearing a further damage to his prop
erty, foreclosed. But here the cause of all this anxiety took
matters into his own hands and disappeared.
When we next heard from him, he had in some mysterious
way been relieved alike of his wife and property and was living
alone at Rockville, fifty miles away, and editing a newspaper.
But that originality he had displayed when dealing with the
## p. 7001 (#393) ###########################################
BRET HARTE
7001
problems of his own private life, when applied to politics in the
columns of The Rockville Vanguard was singularly unsuccessful.
An amusing exaggeration, purporting to be an exact account of
the manner in which the opposing candidate had murdered his
Chinese laundryman, was, I regret to say, answered only by
assault and battery. A gratuitous and purely imaginative de-
scription of a great religious revival in Calaveras, in which the
sheriff of the county-a notoriously profane skeptic-was alleged
to have been the chief exhorter, resulted only in the withdrawal
of the county advertising from the paper. In the midst of this
practical confusion he suddenly died. It was then discovered, as
a crowning proof of his absurdity, that he had left a will, be-
queathing his entire effects to a freckle-faced maid-servant at the
Rockville Hotel. But that absurdity became serious when it was
also discovered that among these effects were a thousand shares
in the Rising Sun Mining Company, which a day or two after
his demise, and while people were still laughing at his grotesque
benefaction, suddenly sprang into opulence and celebrity. Three
millions of dollars was roughly estimated as the value of the
estate thus wantonly sacrificed. For it is only fair to state, as a
just tribute to the enterprise and energy of that young and thriv
ing settlement, that there was not probably a single citizen who
did not feel himself better able to control the deceased humor-
ist's property. Some had expressed a doubt of their ability to
support a family; others had felt perhaps too keenly the deep
responsibility resting upon them when chosen from the panel as
jurors, and had evaded their public duties; a few had declined
office and a low salary: but no one shrank from the possibility
of having been called upon to assume the functions of Peggy
Moffat the heiress.
The will was contested,- first by the widow, who it now
appeared had never been legally divorced from the deceased;
next by four of his cousins, who awoke, only too late, to a con-
sciousness of his moral and pecuniary worth. But the humble
legatee a singularly plain, unpretending, uneducated Western.
girl-exhibited a dogged pertinacity in claiming her rights. She
rejected all compromises. A rough sense of justice in the com-
munity, while doubting her ability to take care of the whole
fortune, suggested that she ought to be content with three hun-
dred thousand dollars.
polemical power is the book in which he and Herbert Spencer took
up a lance for their opposing religious views. The controversy
appeared first in the Nineteenth Century in 1884, and the wide atten-
tion it attracted showed that the disputants were regarded as author-
itative exponents of their respective creeds.
Mr. Harrison has translated Comte's 'Social Statics. ' In history
his views are modern and liberal, while his style makes the expres-
sion of exceptional interest. Works in this field are,-"The Meaning
of History' (1862), Oliver Cromwell (1888), 'Annals of an Old
Manor-House' (1893), and 'The Study of History' (1895). Other books
are-Order and Progress' (1875), and The Choice of Books, and Other
Literary Pieces' (1886). The essay on The Choice of Books' has
always been popular, and is distinguished by a fine culture, independ-
ence of judgment, good sense, and happy presentation.
THE USE AND SELECTION OF BOOKS
From The Choice of Books, and Other Literary Pieces >
T IS most right that in the great republic of letters there should
be freedom of intercourse and a spirit of equality. Every
reader who holds a book in his hand is free of the inmost
minds of men past and present; their lives both within and with-
out the pale of their uttered thoughts are unveiled to him; he
needs no introduction to the greatest; he stands on no ceremony
with them; he may, if he be so minded, scribble "doggerel" on
his Shelley, or he may kick Lord Byron, if he please, into a
corner. He hears Burke perorate, and Johnson dogmatize, and
Scott tell his border tales, and Wordsworth muse on the hillside,
without the leave of any man or the payment of any toll. In the
republic of letters there are no privileged orders or places re-
served. Every man who has written a book, even the diligent Mr.
Whitaker, is in one sense an author; "a book's a book although
there's nothing in't;" and every man who can decipher a penny
journal is in one sense a reader. And your "general reader,"
like the grave-digger in Hamlet, is hail-fellow with all the mighty
dead: he pats the skull of the jester, batters the cheek of lord,
## p. 6977 (#365) ###########################################
FREDERIC HARRISON
6977
lady, or courtier, and uses "imperious Cæsar" to teach boys the
Latin declensions.
But this noble equality of all writers-of all writers and of
all readers—has a perilous side to it. It is apt to make us in-
discriminate in the books we read, and somewhat contemptuous
of the mighty men of the past. Men who are most observant as
to the friends they make or the conversation they share, are
carelessness itself as to the books to whom they intrust them-
selves and the printed language with which they saturate their
Yet can any friendship or society be more important to
us than that of the books which form so large a part of our
minds, and even of our characters? Do we in real life take any
pleasant fellow to our homes and chat with some agreeable ras-
cal by our firesides, we who will take up any pleasant fellow's
printed memoirs, we who delight in the agreeable rascal when
he is cut up into pages and bound in calf?
If any person given to reading were honestly to keep a regis-
ter of all the printed stuff that he or she consumes in a year,—
all the idle tales of which the very names and the story are for-
gotten in a week, the bookmaker's prattle about nothing at so
much a sheet, the fugitive trifling about silly things and empty
people, the memoirs of the unmemorable, and lives of those who
never really lived at all,-of what a mountain of rubbish would
it be the catalogue! Exercises for the eye and the memory, as
mechanical as if we set ourselves to learn the names, ages, and
family histories of every one who lives in our street; the flirta-
tions of their maiden aunts; and the circumstances surrounding
the birth of their grandmother's first baby.
It is impossible to give any method to our reading till we get
nerve enough to reject. The most exclusive and careful amongst
us will (in literature) take boon companions out of the street, as
easily as an idler in a tavern. "I came across such-and-such a
book that I never heard mentioned," says one, "and found it
curious, though entirely worthless. "-"I strayed on a volume by
I know not whom, on a subject for which I never cared. " And
so on. There are curious and worthless creatures enough in any
pot-house all day long; and there is incessant talk in omnibus,
train, or street by we know not whom, about we care not what.
Yet if a printer and a bookseller can be induced to make this
gabble as immortal as print and publication can make it, then it
straightway is literature, and in due time it becomes "curious. "
XII-437
―――
## p. 6978 (#366) ###########################################
6978
FREDERIC HARRISON
I have no intention to moralize or to indulge in a homily
against the reading of what is deliberately evil. There is not so
much need for this now, and I am not discoursing on the whole
duty of man. I take that part of our reading which by itself is
no doubt harmless, entertaining, and even gently instructive.
But of this enormous mass of literature how much deserves to
be chosen out, to be preferred to all the great books of the
world, to be set apart for those precious hours which are all that
the most of us can give to solid reading? The vast proportion
of books are books that we shall never be able to read. A seri-
ous percentage of books are not worth reading at all. The really
vital books for us we also know to be a very trifling portion of
the whole. And yet we act as if every book were as good as
any other, as if it were merely a question of order which we
take up first, as if any book were good enough for us, and as if
all were alike honorable, precious, and satisfying. Alas! books
cannot be more than the men who write them; and as a fair pro-
portion of the human race now write books, with motives and
objects as various as human activity, books as books are entitled
à priori, until their value is proved, to the same attention and
respect as houses, steam-engines, pictures, fiddles, bonnets, and
other products of human industry. In the shelves of those
libraries which are our pride, libraries public or private, circu-
lating or very stationary, are to be found those great books of
the world rari nantes in gurgite vasto, those books which are
truly "the precious life-blood of a master spirit. " But the very
familiarity which their mighty fame has bred in us makes us
indifferent; we grow weary of what every one is supposed to have
read; and we take down something which looks a little eccentric,
some worthless book, on the mere ground that we never heard
of it before.
Thus the difficulties of literature are in their way as great as
those of the world; the obstacles to finding the right friends are
as great, the peril is as great of being lost in a Babel of voices.
and an ever-changing mass of beings. Books are not wiser than
men; the true books are not easier to find than the true men;
the bad books or the vulgar books are not less obtrusive and not
less ubiquitous than the bad or vulgar men are everywhere; the
art of right reading is as long and difficult to learn as the art of
right living. Those who are on good terms with the first author
they meet, run as much risk as men who surrender their time to
## p. 6979 (#367) ###########################################
FREDERIC HARRISON
6979
the first passer in the street; for to be open to every book is for
the most part to gain as little as possible from any.
A man
aimlessly wandering about in a crowded city is of all men the
most lonely so he who takes up only the books that he "comes
across" is pretty certain to meet but few that are worth know-
ing.
In
Now this danger is one to which we are specially exposed in
this age.
Our high-pressure life of emergencies, our whirling
industrial organization or disorganization, have brought us in this
(as in most things) their peculiar difficulties and drawbacks.
almost everything, vast opportunities and gigantic means of mul-
tiplying our products bring with them new perils and troubles
which are often at first neglected. Our huge cities, where wealth
is piled up and the requirements and appliances of life extended
beyond the dreams of our forefathers, seem to breed in them-
selves new forms of squalor, disease, blights, or risks to life, such
as we are yet unable to master. So the enormous multiplicity of
modern books is not altogether favorable to the knowing of the
best. I listen with mixed satisfaction to the pæans that they
chant over the works which issue from the press each day: how
the books poured forth from Paternoster Row might in a few
years be built into a pyramid that would fill the dome of St.
Paul's. How in this mountain of literature am I to find the
really useful book? How, when I have found it and found its
value, am I to get others to read it? How am I to keep my
head clear in the torrent and di of works, all of which distract
my attention, most of which promise me something, whilst so
few fulfill that promise? The Nile is the source of the Egyp-
tian's bread, and without it he perishes of hunger. But the Nile
may be rather too liberal in his flood, and then the Egyptian
runs imminent risk of drowning.
And thus there never was a time, at least during the last two
hundred years, when the difficulties in the way of making an
efficient use of books were greater than they are to-day, when
the obstacles were more real between readers and the right
books to read, when it was practically so troublesome to find out
that which it is of vital importance to know; and that not by
the dearth, but by the plethora of printed matter.
For it comes
to nearly the same thing, whether we are actually debarred by
physical impossibility from getting the right book into our hand,
or whether we are choked off from the right book by the
## p. 6980 (#368) ###########################################
6980
FREDERIC HARRISON
obtrusive crowd of the wrong books: so that it needs a strong
character and a resolute system of reading to keep the head cool
in the storm of literature around us. We read nowadays in the
market-place; I should rather say in some large steam factory of
letter-press, where damp sheets of new print whirl round us per-
petually; if it be not rather some noisy book fair where literary
showmen tempt us with performing dolls, and the gongs of rival
booths are stunning our ears from morn till night. Contrast with
this pandemonium of Leipsic and Paternoster Row the sublime
picture of our Milton in his early retirement at Horton, when,
musing over his coming flight to the epic heaven, practicing his
pinions, as he tells Diodati, he consumed five years of solitude in
reading the ancient writers-
"Et totum rapiunt me, mea vita, libri. "
Who now reads the ancient writers? Who systematically reads
the great writers, be they ancient or modern, whom the consent
of ages has marked out as classics: typical, immortal, peculiar
teachers of our race? Alas! the 'Paradise Lost' is lost again to
us beneath an inundation of graceful academic verse, sugary
stanzas of ladylike prettiness, and ceaseless explanations in more
or less readable prose of what John Milton meant or did not
mean, or what he saw or did not see, who married his great-
aunt, and why Adam or Satan is like that or unlike the other.
We read a perfect library about the 'Paradise Lost,' but the
'Paradise Lost' itself we do not read.
I am not presumptuous enough to assert that the larger part
of modern literature is not worth reading in itself, that the prose
is not readable, entertaining, one may say highly instructive.
Nor do I pretend that the verses which we read so zealously in
place of Milton's are not good verses. On the contrary, I think
them sweetly conceived, as musical and as graceful as the verse
of any age in our history. A great deal of our modern literature
is such that it is exceedingly difficult to resist it, and it is unde-
niable that it gives us real information. It seems perhaps un-
reasonable to many to assert that a decent readable book which
gives us actual instruction can be otherwise than a useful com-
panion and a solid gain. Possibly many people are ready to cry
out upon me as an obscurantist for venturing to doubt a genial
confidence in all literature simply as such. But the question
which weighs upon me with such really crushing urgency is this:
## p. 6981 (#369) ###########################################
FREDERIC HARRISON
6981
What are the books that in our little remnant of reading-time it
is most vital for us to know? For the true use of books is of
such sacred value to us that to be simply entertained is to cease
to be taught, elevated, inspired by books; merely to gather in-
formation of a chance kind is to close the mind to knowledge of
the urgent kind.
Every book that we take up without a purpose is an oppor-
tunity lost of taking up a book with a purpose; every bit of
stray information which we cram into our heads without any
sense of its importance, is for the most part a bit of the most
useful information driven out of our heads and choked off from
our minds. It is so certain that information-i. e. , the knowl-
edge, the stored thoughts and observations of mankind-is now
grown to proportions so utterly incalculable and prodigious, that
even the learned whose lives are given to study can but pick up
some crumbs that fall from the table of truth. They delve and
tend but a plot in that vast and teeming kingdom, whilst those
whom active life leaves with but a few cramped hours of study
can hardly come to know the very vastness of the field before
them, or how infinitesimally small is the corner they can traverse
at the best. We know all is not of equal value. We know that
books differ in value as much as diamonds differ from the sand
on the sea-shore, as much as our living friend differs from a
dead rat. We know that much in the myriad-peopled world of
books very much in all kinds-is trivial, enervating, inane, even
noxious. And thus, where we have infinite opportunities of wast-
ing our efforts to no end, of fatiguing our minds without enrich-
ing them, of clogging the spirit without satisfying it,— there, I
cannot but think, the very infinity of opportunities is robbing us
of the actual power of using them. And thus I come often, in
my less hopeful moods, to watch the remorseless cataract of daily
literature which thunders over the remnants of the past, as if it
were a fresh impediment to the men of our day in the way of
systematic knowledge and consistent powers of thought; as if it
were destined one day to overwhelm the great inheritance of
mankind in prose and verse.
And so, I say it most confidently,- the first intellectual task
of our age is rightly to order and make serviceable the vast realm
of printed material which four centuries have swept across our
path. To organize our knowledge, to systematize our reading, to
save out of the relentless cataract of ink the immortal thoughts
―
## p. 6982 (#370) ###########################################
6982
FREDERIC HARRISON
of the greatest,—this is a necessity, unless the productive inge-
nuity of man is to lead us at last to a measureless and pathless
chaos. To know anything that turns up is, in the infinity of
knowledge, to know nothing. To read the first book we come
across, in the wilderness of books, is to learn nothing. To turn
over the pages of ten thousand volumes is to be practically in-
different to all that is good. .
«<
<<
>>>>
>>
But how are we to know the best; how are we to gain this
definite idea of the vast world of letters? There are some who
appear to suppose that the best >>
are known only to experts in
an esoteric way, who may reveal to inquirers what schoolboys and
betting men describe as "tips. "
tips. " There are no "tips" in liter-
ature; the "best" authors are never dark horses; we need no
"crammers" and coaches to thrust us into the presence of the
great writers of all time. "Crammers will only lead us wrong.
It is a thing far easier and more common than many imagine, to
discover the best. It needs no research, no learning, and is only
misguided by recondite information. The world has long ago
closed the great assize of letters, and judged the first places
everywhere. In such a matter the judgment of the world,
guided and informed by a long succession of accomplished crit-
ics, is almost unerring. When some Zoïlus finds blemishes in
Homer, and prefers, it may be, the work of some Apollonius of
his own discovering, we only laugh. There may be doubts about
the third and the fourth rank; but the first and the second are
hardly open to discussion. The gates which lead to the Elysian
Fields may slowly wheel back on their adamantine hinges to
admit now and then some new and chosen modern. But the
company of the masters of those who know, and in especial
degree of the great poets, is a roll long closed and complete,
and they who are of it hold ever peaceful converse together.
Hence we may find it a useful maxim that if our reading be
utterly closed to the great poems of the world, there is some-
thing amiss with our reading. If you find Milton, Dante, Cal-
deron, Goethe, so much "Hebrew-Greek" to you; if your Homer
and Virgil, your Molière and Scott, rest year after year undis-
turbed on their shelves beside your school trigonometry and your
old college text-books; if you have never opened the 'Cid,' the
'Nibelungen,' 'Crusoe,' and 'Don Quixote' since you were a
boy, and are wont to leave the Bible and the 'Imitation' for some
wet Sunday afternoon-know, friend, that your reading can do
## p. 6983 (#371) ###########################################
FREDERIC HARRISON
6983
you little real good. Your mental digestion is ruined or sadly
out of order. No doubt, to thousands of intelligent, educated
men who call themselves readers, the reading through a canto of
the 'Purgatorio' or a book of the 'Paradise Lost' is a task as
irksome as it would be to decipher an ill-written manuscript in a
language that is almost forgotten. But although we are not to
be always reading epics, and are chiefly in the mood for slighter
things, to be absolutely unable to read Milton or Dante with
enjoyment is to be in a very bad way. Aristophanes, Theocritus,
Boccaccio, Cervantes, Molière, are often as light as the driven
foam; but they are not light enough for the general reader.
Their humor is too bright and lovely for the groundlings. They
are, alas! "classics," somewhat apart from our every-day ways;
they are not banal enough for us: and so for us they slumber
"unknown in a long night," just because they are immortal poets
and are not scribblers of to-day.
When will men understand that the reading of great books is
a faculty to be acquired, not a natural gift, at least not to those
who are spoiled by our current education and habits of life?
Ceci tuera cela, the last great poet might have said of the first
circulating library. An insatiable appetite for new novels makes
it as hard to read a masterpiece as it seems to a Parisian boule-
vardier to live in a quiet country. Until a man can truly enjoy
a draught of clear water bubbling from a mountain-side, his taste
is in an unwholesome state. And so he who finds the Heliconian
spring insipid should look to the state of his nerves. Putting
aside the iced air of the difficult mountain-tops of epic, tragedy,
or psalm, there are some simple pieces which may serve as an
unerring test of a healthy or a vicious taste for imaginative work.
If the 'Cid,' the 'Vita Nuova,' the 'Canterbury Tales,' Shake-
speare's Sonnets,' and 'Lycidas' pall on a man; if he care not
for Malory's Morte d'Arthur' and the 'Red Cross Knight'; if he
thinks Crusoe' and the 'Vicar' books for the young; if he thrill
not with the 'Ode to the West Wind' and the Ode to a Grecian
Urn'; if he have no stomach for Christabel' or the lines written
on 'The Wye above Tintern Abbey,' he should fall on his
knees and pray for a cleanlier and quieter spirit.
(
The intellectual system of most of us in these days needs
"to purge and to live cleanly. " Only by such a course of treat-
ment shall we bring our minds to feel at peace with the grand
pure works of the world. Something we ought all to know of
-
## p. 6984 (#372) ###########################################
6984
FREDERIC HARRISON
the masterpieces of antiquity, and of the other nations of Europe.
To understand a great national poet such as Dante, Calderon,
Corneille, or Goethe, is to know other types of human civiliza-
tion in ways which a library of histories does not sufficiently
teach. The great masterpieces of the world are thus, quite apart
from the charm and solace they give us, the master instruments
of a solid education.
## p. 6984 (#373) ###########################################
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## p. 6985 (#377) ###########################################
6985
BRET HARTE
(1839-)
BY WILLIAM HENRY HUDSON
RANCIS BRET HARTE (from whose name, so far as pen purposes
are concerned, the Francis was long since dropped) was born
in Albany, New York, August 25th, 1839. After an ordinary
school education he went in 1854 to California, - drawn thither, like so
many other ambitious youths, by the gold excitement and the pros-
pects of fortune. At first he tried his hand at teaching and mining,
and had ample opportunity to study in close contact the wild frontier.
life which he was afterwards to portray. Unsuccessful in both lines
of experiment, he presently entered a printing-office, and in 1857 was
in San Francisco as compositor on the Golden Era. Unsigned sketches
from his pen soon after this began to attract notice, and he was
invited to join the staff of the Californian, to which he contributed a
series of clever parodies on the styles and methods of famous con-
temporary writers of fiction, subsequently published in volume form
under the title 'Condensed Novels. ' Meanwhile, in 1864, Mr. Harte
had been made secretary of the U. S. Branch Mint; and during his
six-years' tenure of office he produced some of his best known poems,
— 'John Burns of Gettysburg,' 'The Pliocene Skull,' and 'The Society
upon the Stanislaus' among the number. In 1868 the Overland
Monthly was started, with Mr. Harte as editor. It was now that he
began in a systematic way to work up the material furnished by his
earlier frontier life. The first result was 'The Luck of Roaring
Camp,' which upon its appearance in the second number of the mag-
azine instantly made its mark, and was accepted as heralding the
rise of a new star in the literary heavens. No other prose production
of its author has enjoyed greater popularity, though as a work of art
it will hardly bear comparison with such stories as 'Miggles,' 'Ten-
nessee's Partner,' and 'The Outcasts of Poker Flat,' which followed
in rapid succession, and the last-named of which is generally consid-
ered the most perfect of his works. In 1871 Mr. Harte settled in
New York, and became a regular contributor to the Atlantic Monthly.
In 1878 he was appointed United States consul in Crefeld, Germany,
whence in 1880 he was removed to the more lucrative post in Glasgow.
Since then he has resided abroad, principally in England, where his
-
## p. 6986 (#378) ###########################################
6986
BRET HARTE
books have enjoyed wide popularity. His pen has remained active;
but despite long absence from the land out of whose life his initial
successes were wrought, he has continued for the most part to deal
with the old California themes, remaining facile princeps in a field in
which he now has many imitators. That he has ever done anything
quite so good as his first group of stories and poems cannot be said,
for he has undoubtedly paid the penalty of working an exhausted
soil, and his later volumes are marked as a whole by the repetition of
well-worn motives and by declining spontaneity and power. Hence
it is by his earlier writings that he will always be known. Still, the
average quality of his output has remained unusually high; and when
the circumstances of its production are borne in mind, it may per-
haps seem remarkable that it should have preserved so many traces
of the writer's youthful freshness and vigor.
In estimating Mr. Harte's work, allowance has of course to be
made for the fact that it was his rare good fortune to break new
ground, and to become the first literary interpreter of a life which
with its primitive breadth and freedom, its unconventionality and
picturesqueness, its striking contrasts of circumstance and character,
offered singular opportunities to the novelist. But appreciation of
this point must not lead us to underrate the strength and certainty
with which the chance of the moment was seized on and turned to
use. In the last analysis the secret of Mr. Harte's success will be
found to inhere not so much in the novelty of the people and inci-
dents described, as in the sterling qualities of his own genius and
art.
Among such qualities, those which perhaps most constantly impress
the critical reader of his total work are his splendid dramatic in-
stinct, his keen insight into character, his broad sympathy, and his
subtle and pervasive humor. In his handling of certain of the more
commonplace comic types, he frequently reveals the strong early
influence of Dickens, whose familiar method is to be detected for
instance in Sal, Mrs. Markle, and even Colonel Starbottle of 'Gabriel
Conroy,' and of whom we are often unexpectedly reminded here and
there in the author's more distinctive studies. But at his best, and
in his own particular field,—in such characters as the gamblers Ham-
lin and Oakhurst, Tennessee's Partner, Kentuck, Miggles, M'liss, Olly,
and many others, from his earlier stories especially,- Mr. Harte is
altogether himself. Dealing for the most part with large, strongly
marked, elemental types, as these develop and express themselves
under conditions which give free play to instinct and passion, he does
not indulge in lengthy analyses or detailed descriptions. His men
and women are sketched with a few bold firm strokes, and are left
to work out their own personalities in speech and deed; and yet, such
## p. 6987 (#379) ###########################################
BRET HARTE
6987
is the skill with which this is accomplished that they stand out
before us as creatures of real flesh and blood, whom we unquestion-
ingly, even if sometimes against our cooler judgment, accept and
believe in. Mr. Harte does not purposely soften the shadows in his
pictures; the baseness and extravagance, the sin and wretchedness, of
frontier life are frankly portrayed, as well as its rough chivalry and
its crude romance. None the less, there can be little doubt that con-
sciously or unconsciously he has contrived to throw an idealizing
glamor over the fret and fever, the squalor and misery, of the mine
and the camp, and that many of his most lifelike and successful charac-
ters are wrought in the imagination, though out of the stuff of fact.
His place is emphatically not among the realists, realistic as much of
his work undoubtedly is; for the shaping power of dramatic genius
molds and fashions the raw material furnished by experience and ob-
servation. That to take a single example - the reprobate Hamlin
had no counterpart or original in actual life, is altogether improbable;
yet it is certain that in the picture as we have it, much, perhaps
very much, is attributable to the cunning and delicacy of the artist's
hand.
Thus what he gives us is something very different from a
photograph. But it is just here that we touch upon what is perhaps
one of the finest qualities of his work,- a quality not to be separated
from his tendency towards idealization. Rarely falling into the didac-
tic, and dwelling habitually upon life's unexplained and inexplicable
tragic complexities, he nevertheless suffuses his stories with an atmos-
phere of charity, eminently clear, sweet, and wholesome. His char-
acteristic men and women, products of rude conditions, are generally
rough and often positively vicious; but he succeeds in convincing his
readers of their common humanity, and in showing the keen respon-
siveness to nobler influences still possessed by hearts which, super-
ficially considered, might well seem hopelessly callous and dead. And
he does this simply and naturally, without maudlin sentiment or
forced rhetoric-without, in a word, playing to the gallery.
The weakness of Mr. Harte's writing is closely connected with
some of its main elements of strength. A master of condensed and
rapid narration, he has produced many stories which are too episodi-
cal in character and sketchy in method to be completely satisfac-
tory from the artistic point of view; while in his desire to achieve
terseness, he occasionally sacrifices clearness of plot.
This is par-
ticularly the case with his more ambitious efforts, especially with his
long novel 'Gabriel Conroy,' an elaborate study of the culture condi-
tions of early California civilization. The book has many admirable
points. It abounds in memorable descriptions, vivid and humorous
character sketches, and separate scenes of remarkable power. But it
lacks wholeness, proportion, lucidity. It is a bundle of episodes, and
## p. 6988 (#380) ###########################################
6988
BRET HARTE
these episodes do not hang together; its plot is unduly intricate;
while the conduct of the story everywhere shows the author's inabil-
ity to hold in hand and weave into definite pattern the multitudinous
threads indispensable to his design. Undoubtedly written under the
influence of the huge novels of Dickens, the contrast that it presents
on the structural side with such an orderly and well-sustained work
as 'Bleak House is almost painful.
As a writer of verse Mr. Harte is unequal. Some of his humorous
poetry is too racy and original to be lost; much on the other hand is
too temporary and extravagant to find an abiding place in literature.
His best verse, artistically considered, is perhaps to be sought in his
wonderfully dramatic monologues in dialect. Jim' and 'In the Tun-
nel' are masterpieces of this kind; while Plain Language from
Truthful James' (currently known as The Heathen Chinee'), though
it owed much of its original vogue to local and accidental circum-
stances, must remain secure of a distinct place in American verse.
Пешу
William Henry Hudson
The following poems are all taken from The Poetical Works of Bret Harte,'
copyright 1882 by Houghton, Mifflin & Co. , Boston, and are reprinted
by special arrangement with the publishers.
JIM
AY there! P'r'aps
Some on you chaps
SA
Might know Jim Wild?
-
no offense:
Well,-
Thar ain't no sense
In gittin' riled!
Jim was my chum
Up on the Bar:
That's why I come
Down from up yar,
Lookin' for Jim.
Thank ye, sir! You
Ain't of that crew,
Blest if you are!
Money? Not much:
That ain't my kind:
## p. 6989 (#381) ###########################################
BRET HARTE
6989
I ain't no such.
Rum? I don't mind,
Seein' it's you.
Well, this yer Jim,
Did you know him?
Jess 'bout your size;
Same kind of eyes;
Well, that is strange:
Why, it's two year
Since he came here,
Sick, for a change.
Well, here's to us:
Eh?
The h you say!
Dead?
That little cuss?
What makes you star',
You over thar?
Can't a man drop
'S glass in yer shop
But you must rar'?
It wouldn't take
D- much to break
You and your bar.
Dead!
Poor-little- Jim!
Why, thar was me,
Jones, and Bob Lee,
Harry and Ben,-
No-account men:
Then to take him!
Well, thar, good-by-
No more, sir—I—
Eh?
What's that you say?
Why, dern it! -sho! -
No? Yes! By Joe!
Sold!
Sold! Why, you limb,
You ornery,
Derned old
Long-legged Jim!
-
## p. 6990 (#382) ###########################################
6990
BRET HARTE
DOW'S FLAT
(1856)
Dow's
ow's FLAT. That's its name;
And I reckon that you
Are a stranger? The same?
Well, I thought it was true,-
For thar isn't a man on the river as can't spot the place at first view.
It was called after Dow,
Which the same was an ass;
And as to the how
Thet the thing kem to pass,—
Jest tie up your hoss to that buckeye, and sit ye down here in the
grass.
You see this yer Dow
Hed the worst kind of luck;
He slipped up somehow
On each thing thet he struck.
Why, ef he'd a-straddled thet fence-rail, the derned thing 'ud get up
and buck.
He mined on the bar
Till he couldn't pay rates;
He was smashed by a car
When he tunneled with Bates;
And right on the top of his trouble kem his wife and five kids from
the States.
It was rough, mighty rough;
But the boys they stood by,
And they brought him the stuff
For a house, on the sly;
And the old woman,- well, she did washing, and took on when no
one was nigh.
But this yer luck of Dow's
Was so powerful mean
That the spring near his house
Dried right up on the green;
And he sunk forty feet down for water, but nary a drop to be seen.
Then the bar petered out,
And the boys wouldn't stay;
## p. 6991 (#383) ###########################################
BRET HARTE
6991
And the chills got about,
And his wife fell away;
But Dow in his well kept a-peggin' in his usual ridikilous way.
One day it was June,
And a year ago, jest
This Dow kem at noon
To his work like the rest,
With a shovel and pick on his shoulder, and a derringer hid in his
breast.
Let's see,
well,
And he stands on the brink,
He goes to th
And stops for a spell
Jest to listen and think:
For the sun in his eyes (jest like this, sir! ), you see, kinder made the
cuss blink.
His two ragged gals
In the gulch were at play,
And a gownd that was Sal's
Kinder flapped on a bay:
Not much for a man to be leavin', but his all,-
folks say.
And- That's a peart hoss
Thet you've got, ain't it now?
What might be her cost?
Eh? Oh! -
-
Well, then, Dow-
-
- well, that forty-foot grave wasn't his, sir, that day, anyhow.
For a blow of his pick
It was gold,-in the quartz,
And it ran all alike;
And I reckon five oughts
as I've heer'd the
Sorter caved in the side,
And he looked and turned sick,
Then he trembled and cried.
For you see the dern cuss had struck - "Water? " Beg your parding,
young man,-there you lied!
Thet's why it's Dow's Flat;
And the thing of it is
Was the worth of that strike;
And that house with the coopilow's his'n,- which the same isn't bad
for a Pike.
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BRET HARTE
.
"
That he kinder got that
Through sheer contrairiness:
For 'twas water the derned cuss was seekin', and his luck made him
certain to miss.
Thet's so! Thar's your way,
To the left of yon tree;
But-a-look h'yur, say?
Won't you come up to tea?
No? Well then, the next time you're passin'; and ask after Dow-
and thet's me.
IN THE TUNNEL
IDN'T know Flynn,-
Flynn of Virginia,-
Long as he's been yar?
Look'ee here, stranger,
Whar hev you been?
-
Here in this tunnel
He was my pardner,
That same Tom Flynn,-
Working together,
In wind and weather,
Day out and in.
Didn't know Flynn!
Well, that is queer;
Why, it's a sin
To think of Tom Flynn,-
Tom with his cheer,
Tom without fear,-
Stranger, look yar!
Thar in the drift,
Back to the wall,
He held the timbers
Ready to fall;
Then in the darkness
I heard him call:
"Run for your life, Jake!
Run for your wife's sake!
Don't wait for me. "
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6993
And that was all
Heard in the din,
Heard of Tom Flynn,-
Flynn of Virginia.
That's all about
Flynn of Virginia.
That lets me out.
Here in the damp,
Out of the sun,
That 'ar derned lamp
Makes my eyes run.
Well, there, I'm done!
―
But, sir, when you'll
Hear the next fool
Asking of Flynn,
Flynn of Virginia,
Just you chip in,
Say you knew Flynn;
Say that you've been yar.
THE SOCIETY UPON THE STANISLAUS
RESIDE at Table Mountain, and my name is Truthful James;
I am not up to small deceit or any sinful games;
And I'll tell in simple language what I know about the row
That broke up our Society upon the Stanislow.
But first I would remark that it is not a proper plan
For any scientific gent to whale his fellow-man,
And if a member don't agree with his peculiar whim,
To lay for that same member for to "put a head" on him.
Now, nothing could be finer or more beautiful to see
Than the first six months' proceedings of that same Society,
Till Brown of Calaveras brought a lot of fossil bones
That he found within a tunnel near the tenement of Jones.
Then Brown he read a paper, and he reconstructed there,
From those same bones, an animal that was extremely rare;
And Jones then asked the Chair for a suspension of the rules,
Till he could prove that those same bones was one of his lost mules.
XII-438
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BRET HARTE
#4
Then Brown he smiled a bitter smile, and said he was at fault. -
It seemed he had been trespassing on Jones's family vault.
He was a most sarcastic man, this quiet Mr. Brown,
And on several occasions he had cleaned out the town.
Now, I hold it is not decent for a scientific gent
To say another is an ass, at least, to all intent;
Nor should the individual who happens to be meant
Reply by heaving rocks at him, to any great extent.
-
Then Abner Dean of Angel's raised a point of order, when
A chunk of old red sandstone took him in the abdomen,
And he smiled a kind of sickly smile, and curled up on the floor,
And the subsequent proceedings interested him no more.
For in less time than I write it, every member did engage
In a warfare with the remnants of a paleozoic age;
And the way they heaved those fossils in their anger was a sin,
Till the skull of an old mammoth caved the head of Thompson in.
And this is all I have to say of these improper games,
For I live at Table Mountain, and my name is Truthful James;
And I've told in simple language what I knew about the row
That broke up our Society upon the Stanislow.
THOMPSON OF ANGEL'S
T IS the story of Thompson-of Thompson, the hero of Angel's.
Frequently drunk was Thompson, but always polite to the stran-
ger;
Light and free was the touch of Thompson upon his revolver;
Great the mortality incident on that lightness and freedom.
Yet not happy or gay was Thompson, the hero of Angel's;
Often spoke to himself in accents of anguish and sorrow:—
"Why do I make the graves of the frivolous youth who in folly
Thoughtlessly pass my revolver, forgetting its lightness and freedom?
"Why in my daily walks does the surgeon drop his left eyelid,
The undertaker smile, and the sculptor of gravestone marbles
Lean on his chisel and gaze? I care not o'ermuch for attention;
Simple am I in my ways, save for this lightness and freedom. "
So spake that pensive man- this Thompson, the hero of Angel's;
Bitterly smiled to himself, as he strode through the chapparal mus-
ing.
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6995
"Why, O why? " echoed the pines in the dark-olive depth far re-
sounding.
"Why, indeed? " whispered the sage-brush that bent 'neath his feet
non-elastic.
Pleasant indeed was that morn that dawned o'er the bar-room at An-
gel's,
Where in their manhood's prime was gathered the pride of the ham-
let.
Six "took sugar in theirs," and nine to the barkeeper lightly
Smiled as they said, "Well, Jim, you can give us our regular fusil. »
Suddenly as the gray hawk swoops down on the barn-yard, alighting
Where, pensively picking their corn, the favorite pullets are gathered,
So in that festive bar-room dropped Thompson, the hero of Angel's,
Grasping his weapon dread with his pristine lightness and freedom.
Never a word he spoke; divesting himself of his garments,
Danced the war-dance of the playful yet truculent Modoc,
Uttered a single whoop, and then in the accents of challenge
Spake, "Oh, behold in me a Crested Jay Hawk of the mountain. "
Then rose a pallid man a man sick with fever and ague;
Small was he, and his step was tremulous, weak, and uncertain;
Slowly a Derringer drew, and covered the person of Thompson;
Said in his feeblest pipe, "I'm a Bald-headed Snipe of the Valley. "
As on its native plains the kangaroo, startled by hunters,
Leaps with successive bounds, and hurries away to the thickets,
So leaped the Crested Hawk, and quietly hopping behind him
Ran, and occasionally shot, that Bald-headed Snipe of the Valley.
Vain at the festive bar still lingered the people of Angel's,
Hearing afar in the woods the petulant pop of the pistol;
Never again returned the Crested Jay Hawk of the mountains,
Never again was seen the Bald-headed Snipe of the Valley.
Yet in the hamlet of Angel's, when truculent speeches are uttered,
When bloodshed and life alone will atone for some trifling misstate-
ment,
Maidens and men in their prime recall the last hero of Angel's,
Think of and vainly regret the Bald-headed Snipe of the Valley!
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BRET HARTE
PLAIN LANGUAGE FROM TRUTHFUL JAMES
TABLE MOUNTAIN
WHIC
HICH I wish to remark,
And my language is plain,
That for ways that are dark,
And for tricks that are vain,
The heathen Chinee is peculiar,
Which the same I would rise to explain.
Ah Sin was his name;
And I shall not deny,
In regard to the same,
What that name might imply;
But his smile it was pensive and childlike,
As I frequent remarked to Bill Nye.
It was August the third,
And quite soft was the skies;
Which it might be inferred
That Ah Sin was likewise;
Yet he played it that day upon William
And me in a way I despise.
Which we had a small game,
And Ah Sin took a hand;
was euchre: the same
He did not understand;
But he smiled as he sat by the table
With a smile that was childlike and bland.
Yet the cards they were stocked
In a way that I grieve,
And my feelings were shocked
At the state of Nye's sleeve,
Which was stuffed full of aces and bowers,
And the same with intent to deceive.
But the hands that were played
By that heathen Chinee,
And the points that he made,
Were quite frightful to see
Till at last he put down a right bower,
Which the same Nye had dealt unto me.
-
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6997
Then I looked up at Nye,
And he gazed upon me;
And he rose with a sigh,
And said, "Can this be?
We are ruined by Chinese cheap labor- »
And he went for that heathen Chinee.
In the scene that ensued
I did not take a hand,
But the floor it was strewed
Like the leaves on the strand
With the cards that Ah Sin had been hiding,
In the game "he did not understand. ”
B
In his sleeves, which were long,
He had twenty-four packs,—
Which was coming it strong,
Yet I state but the facts;
And we found on his nails, which were taper,
What is frequent in tapers- that's wax.
Which is why I remark,
And my language is plain,
That for ways that are dark
And for tricks that are vain,
The heathen Chinee is peculiar -
Which the same I am free to maintain.
From the Atlantic Monthly.
ON A CONE OF THE BIG TREES
(SEQUOIA GIGANTEA)
ROWN foundling of the Western wood,
Babe of primeval wildernesses!
Long on my table thou hast stood
Encounters strange and rude caresses;
Perchance contented with thy lot,
Surroundings new and curious faces,
As though ten centuries were not
Imprisoned in thy shining cases.
Thou bring'st me back the halcyon days
Of grateful rest, the week of leisure,
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BRET HARTE
The journey lapped in autumn haze,
The sweet fatigue that seemed a pleasure,
The morning ride, the noonday halt,
The blazing slopes, the red dust rising,
And then the dim, brown, columned vault,
With its cool, damp, sepulchral spicing.
Once more I see the rocking masts
That scrape the sky, their only tenant
The jay-bird, that in frolic casts
From some high yard his broad blue pennant.
I see the Indian files that keep
Their places in the dusty heather,
Their red trunks standing ankle-deep
In moccasins of rusty leather.
I see all this, and marvel much
That thou, sweet woodland waif, art able
To keep the company of such
As throng thy friend's the poet's table:
The latest spawn the press hath cast,-
The "modern Popes," "the later Byrons,"
Why, e'en the best may not outlast
Thy poor relation Sempervirens !
Thy sire saw the light that shone
On Mohammed's uplifted crescent,
On many a royal gilded throne
And deed forgotten in the present;
He saw the age of sacred trees
And Druid groves and mystic larches;
And saw from forest domes like these
The builder bring his Gothic arches.
And must thou, foundling, still forego
Thy heritage and high ambition,
To lie full lowly and full low,
Adjusted to thy new condition?
Not hidden in the drifted snows,
But under ink-drops idly spattered,
And leaves ephemeral as those
That on thy woodland tomb were scattered?
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6999
DICKENS IN CAMP
BOVE the pines the moon was slowly drifting,
A The river sang below;
The dim Sierras, far beyond, uplifting
Their minarets of snow.
The roaring camp-fire, with rude humor, painted
The ruddy tints of health
On haggard face and form that drooped and fainted
In the fierce race for wealth;
Till one arose, and from his pack's scant treasure
A hoarded volume drew,
And cards were dropped from hands of listless leisure
To hear the tale anew.
And then, while round them shadows gathered faster,
And as the firelight fell,
He read aloud the book wherein the Master
Had writ of "Little Nell. "
Perhaps 'twas boyish fancy,- for the reader
Was youngest of them all,-
But, as he read, from clustering pine and cedar
A silence seemed to fall;
The fir-trees, gathering closer in the shadows,
Listened in every spray,
While the whole camp, with "Nell" on English meadows
Wandered and lost their way.
And so in mountain solitudes, o'ertaken
As by some spell divine,
Their cares dropped from them like the needles shaken
From out the gusty pine.
Lost is that camp and wasted all its fire:
And he who wrought that spell?
Ah! towering pine and stately Kentish spire,
Ye have one tale to tell!
Lost is that camp; but let its fragrant story
Blend with the breath that thrills
With hop-vine's incense all the pensive glory
That fills the Kentish hills.
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And on that grave where English oak and holly
And laurel wreaths entwine,
Deem it not all a too presumptuous folly,—
This spray of Western pine!
AN HEIRESS OF RED DOG
From The Twins of Table Mountain, and Other Stories. Copyright 1879, by
Houghton, Osgood & Co. , Boston. Reprinted by special arrangement
with the publishers.
THE
HE first intimation given of the eccentricity of the testator
was, I think, in the spring of 1854. He was at that time.
in possession of a considerable property, heavily mortgaged
to one friend, and a wife of some attraction, on whose affections
another friend held an incumbering lien. One day it was found
that he had secretly dug, or caused to be dug, a deep trap before
the front door of his dwelling, into which a few friends in the
course of the evening casually and familiarly dropped. This cir-
cumstance, slight in itself, seemed to point to the existence of a
certain humor in the man, which might eventually get into liter-
ature; although his wife's lover-a man of quick discernment,
whose leg was broken by the fall-took other views. It was
some weeks later that while dining with certain other friends of
his wife, he excused himself from the table, to quietly reappear
at the front window with a three-quarter-inch hydraulic pipe,
and a stream of water projected at the assembled company. An
attempt was made to take public cognizance of this; but a major-
ity of the citizens of Red Dog who were not at dinner decided
that a man had a right to choose his own methods of diverting
his company. Nevertheless, there were some hints of his insan-
ity: his wife recalled other acts clearly attributable to dementia;
the crippled lover argued from his own experience that the integ-
rity of her limbs could only be secured by leaving her husband's
house; and the mortgagee, fearing a further damage to his prop
erty, foreclosed. But here the cause of all this anxiety took
matters into his own hands and disappeared.
When we next heard from him, he had in some mysterious
way been relieved alike of his wife and property and was living
alone at Rockville, fifty miles away, and editing a newspaper.
But that originality he had displayed when dealing with the
## p. 7001 (#393) ###########################################
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7001
problems of his own private life, when applied to politics in the
columns of The Rockville Vanguard was singularly unsuccessful.
An amusing exaggeration, purporting to be an exact account of
the manner in which the opposing candidate had murdered his
Chinese laundryman, was, I regret to say, answered only by
assault and battery. A gratuitous and purely imaginative de-
scription of a great religious revival in Calaveras, in which the
sheriff of the county-a notoriously profane skeptic-was alleged
to have been the chief exhorter, resulted only in the withdrawal
of the county advertising from the paper. In the midst of this
practical confusion he suddenly died. It was then discovered, as
a crowning proof of his absurdity, that he had left a will, be-
queathing his entire effects to a freckle-faced maid-servant at the
Rockville Hotel. But that absurdity became serious when it was
also discovered that among these effects were a thousand shares
in the Rising Sun Mining Company, which a day or two after
his demise, and while people were still laughing at his grotesque
benefaction, suddenly sprang into opulence and celebrity. Three
millions of dollars was roughly estimated as the value of the
estate thus wantonly sacrificed. For it is only fair to state, as a
just tribute to the enterprise and energy of that young and thriv
ing settlement, that there was not probably a single citizen who
did not feel himself better able to control the deceased humor-
ist's property. Some had expressed a doubt of their ability to
support a family; others had felt perhaps too keenly the deep
responsibility resting upon them when chosen from the panel as
jurors, and had evaded their public duties; a few had declined
office and a low salary: but no one shrank from the possibility
of having been called upon to assume the functions of Peggy
Moffat the heiress.
The will was contested,- first by the widow, who it now
appeared had never been legally divorced from the deceased;
next by four of his cousins, who awoke, only too late, to a con-
sciousness of his moral and pecuniary worth. But the humble
legatee a singularly plain, unpretending, uneducated Western.
girl-exhibited a dogged pertinacity in claiming her rights. She
rejected all compromises. A rough sense of justice in the com-
munity, while doubting her ability to take care of the whole
fortune, suggested that she ought to be content with three hun-
dred thousand dollars.
