Зображення сторінки
PDF
ePub

Bret Harte (1839-1902)

(Francis) Bret Harte was born at Albany, New York, and went west to California at the age of fifteen. There he became schoolteacher, typesetter, express-agent, miner, and journalist. He was made secretary of the U. S. Branch Mint in 1864, became editor of The Californian and published therein his parodies of contemporary literature, Condensed Novels. In 1868 he became one of the first editors of the new Overland Monthly. Here appeared his "The Luck of Roaring Camp," "Plain Language from Truthful James," etc. He became widely known and came east in 1871. He was appointed U. S. Consul at Crefeld, Germany, in 1878, and at Glasgow, Scotland in 1880. He finally made his home near London, England, dropping out of the ken of all of his friends and never returning to America.

Chance brought about Harte's first printing of "Plain Language from Truthful James" in The Overland but it was immediately reprinted everywhere and made his fame. His Poems appeared in 1871, in the same year with The Luck of Roaring Camp, and Other Sketches. East and West Poems were brought out in the same year. For the next six years a book by Harte appeared annually, his stories, his Poetical Works, his later poems and tales. 1878, 1883, 1885 saw other poems and stories; his novel Maruja appeared in 1885, Three Partners was the last of his volumes, coming out in 1897.

Bret Harte was one of the pioneers who gave our great and primitive West a place in our national literature. His best poems are not all in dialect, and his "Song of the Bullet" has appeared in numberless anthologies. Many of his stories are both melodramatic and sentimental, and these are the defects of many of his poems. In spite of this he conveys truly the locale of the time, and combines tragedy and comedy unusually well.

CHIQUITA*

BEAUTIFUL! Sir, you may say so. Thar isn't her match

in the county.

Is thar, old gal,-Chiquita, my darling, my beauty?
Feel of that neck, sir,-thar's velvet! Whoa!
Steady,-ah, will you, you vixen!

Whoa! I say. Jack, trot her out; let the gentleman look at her paces.

Morgan!-She ain't nothin' else, and I've got the papers to prove it.

Sired by Chippewa Chief, and twelve hundred dollars won't buy her.

Briggs of Tuolumne owned her. Did you know Briggs of Tuolumne ?

Busted hisself in White Pine, and blew out his brains down in 'Frisco?

Hedn't no savey-hed Briggs. Thar, Jack! that'll do,— quit that foolin'!

Nothin' to what she kin do, when she's got her work cut out before her.

Hosses is hosses, you know, and likewise, too, jockeys is jockeys;

And 'tain't ev'ry man as can ride as knows what a hoss has got in him.

The poems by Bret Harte are used by permission of, and by special arrangement with, Houghton Mifflin Company, the authorized publishers.

Know the old ford on the Fork, that nearly got Flani

gan's leaders?

Nasty in daylight, you bet, and a mighty rough ford in low water!

Well, it ain't six weeks ago that me and the Jedge and

his nevey

Struck for that ford in the night, in the rain and the water all round us;

Up to our flanks in the gulch, and Rattlesnake Creek jest a-bilin',

Not a plank left in the dam, and nary a bridge on the

river.

I had the gray, and the Jedge had his roan, and his nevey, Chiquita ;

And after us trundled the rocks jest loosed from the top of the cañon.

Lickity, lickity, switch, we came to the ford, and Chiquita

Buckled right down to her work, and, afore I could yell to her rider,

Took water jest at the ford, and there was the Jedge and me standing,

And twelve hundred dollars of hoss-flesh afloat, and a-driftin' to thunder!

Would ye b'lieve it? That night, that hoss, that 'ar filly, Chiquita,

Walked herself into her stall, and stood there, all quiet

and dripping:

Clean as a beaver or rat, with nary a buckle of harness, Jest as she swam the Fork,-that hoss, that ar' filly, Chiquita.

That's what I call a hoss! and-What did you say?— Oh, the nevey?

Drownded, I reckon, leastways, he never kem back to deny it.

Ye see the derned fool had no seat, ye couldn't have made him a rider;

And then, ye know, boys will be boys, and hosses—well, hosses is hosses!

PLAIN LANGUAGE FROM TRUTHFUL JAMES

(TABLE MOUNTAIN, 1870.)

WHICH 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:

It was euchre. The same

He did not understand;

But he smiled as he sat by the table,

With the 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.

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.

« НазадПродовжити »