BRET HARTE

1839-1902

THE lives of few American writers have been so varied or so picturesque as that of Bret Harte. He was born at Albany, New York, but early in life, having lost his father, he went to California, where he successively taught school, worked in a mine and in a printing office, and edited a newspaper. His fame as a writer spread to the East when he published his story, The Luck of Roaring Camp, in the Overland Monthly, the first successful literary magazine published on the Pacific slope. He removed to New York in 1871, where he published many stories and poems in the periodicals of the day. He also held consulships at Crefeld, Germany, and at Glasgow, Scotland. The last years of his life were spent in England, where he died and was buried. His stories and poems deal chiefly with life in California. They are as popular in England as in America.

JOHN BURNS OF GETTYSBURG

HAVE you heard the story that gossips tell
Of Burns of Gettysburg? — No? Ah, well:
Brief is the glory that hero earns,

Briefer the story of poor John Burns.
He was the fellow who won renown,

The only man who didn't back down

When the rebels rode through his native town;

But held his own in the fight next day,

Looking down the village street,
Where, in the shade of his peaceful vine,
He heard the low of his gathered kine,
And felt their breath with incense sweet;
Or I might say, when the sunset burned
The old farm gable, he thought it turned
The milk that fell like a babbling flood
Into the milk pail red as blood!

Or how he fancied the hum of bees
Were bullets buzzing among the trees.
But all such fanciful thoughts as these

Were strange to a practical man like Burns,
Who minded only his own concerns,

Troubled no more by fancies fine

Than one of his calm-eyed, long-tailed kine, —
Quite old-fashioned and matter-of-fact,

Slow to argue, but quick to act.

That was the reason, as some folk say,
He fought so well on that terrible day.

And it was terrible. On the right
Raged for hours the heady fight,
Thundered the battery's double bass,
Difficult music for men to face;

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While on the left — where now the graves
Undulate like the living waves

That all that day unceasing swept
Up to the pits the rebels kept-

Round shot plowed the upland glades,
Sown with bullets, reaped with blades;
Shattered fences here and there
Tossed their splinters in the air;
The very trees were stripped and bare;
The barns that once held yellow grain
Were heaped with harvests of the slain;

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The cattle bellowed on the plain,

The turkeys screamed with might and main,
And brooding barnfowl left their rest
With strange shells bursting in each nest.

Just where the tide of the battle turns,
Erect and lonely stood old John Burns.
How do you think the man was dressed?
He wore an ancient long buff vest,
Yellow as saffron, but his best;

And buttoned over his manly breast

Was a bright blue coat, with a rolling collar,
And large gilt buttons,― size of a dollar,
With tails that the country-folk called "swaller."
He wore a broad-brimmed, bell-crowned hat,
White as the locks on which it sat.
Never had such a sight been seen

For forty years on the village green,
Since old John Burns was a country beau,
And went to the "quiltings" long ago.

Close at his elbows all that day,
Veterans of the Peninsula,

Sunburnt and bearded, charged away;
And striplings, downy of lip and chin, -
Clerks that the Home Guard mustered in,
Glanced, as they passed, at the hat he wore,
Then at the rifle his right hand bore,
And hailed him, from out their youthful lore,
With scraps of a slangy répertoire :

"How are you, White Hat?" "Put her through!"
"Your head's level!" and "Bully for you!"
Called him "Daddy," begged he'd disclose
The name of the tailor who made his clothes,
And what was the value he set on those;

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While Burns, unmindful of jeer and scoff,
Stood there picking the rebels off,

With his long brown rifle and bell-crown hat
And the swallowtails they were laughing at.

'Twas but for a moment, for that respect
Which clothes all courage their voices checked;
And something the wildest could understand
Spake in the old man's strong right hand,
And his corded throat, and the lurking frown
Of his eyebrows under his old bell-crown;
Until, as they gazed, there crept an awe

Through the ranks in whispers, and some men saw,
In the antique vestments and long white hair,
The Past of the Nation in battle there;
And some of the soldiers since declare

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That the gleam of his old white hat afar,

Like the crested plume of the brave Navarre,
That day was their oriflamme of war.

So raged the battle. You know the rest:

How the rebels, beaten and backward pressed,
Broke at the final charge and ran,

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At which John Burns a practical man
Shouldered his rifle, unbent his brows,

And then went back to his bees and cows.

That is the story of old John Burns;

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This is the moral the reader learns :

In fighting the battle, the question's whether
You'll show a hat that's white, or a feather!

LONG'S AM. POEMS- -17

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 nothing else, and I've got the papers to prove it.

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

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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.

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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.

Know the old ford on the Fork, that nearly got Flanigan'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;

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