"Stranger, you've been taken in. Everybody in this camp knows that horse Any child, any Injun, could have told you that he'd buck; he is the very worst devil to buck on the continent of America. You hear me. I'm Curry. Old Curry. Old Abe Curry. And moreover, he is a simon-pure, out-and-out,

OLD ABE.

"

genuine d-d Mexican plug, and an uncommon mean one at that, too. Why, you turnip, if you had laid low and kept dark, there's chances to buy an American horse for mighty little more than you paid for that bloody old foreign relic."

I gave no sign; but I made up my mind that if the auction

eer's brother's funeral took place while I was in the Territory I would postpone all other recreations and attend it.

After a gallop of sixteen miles the Californian youth and the Genuine Mexican Plug came tearing into town again, shedding foam-flakes like the spume-spray that drives before a typhoon, and, with one final skip over a wheelbarrow and a Chinaman, cast anchor in front of the "ranch."

Such panting and blowing! Such spreading and contracting of the red equine nostrils, and glaring of the wild equine eye! But was the imperial beast subjugated? Indeed he was not. His lordship the Speaker of the House thought he was, and mounted him to go down to the Capitol; but the frst dash the creature made was over a pile of telegraph poles half as high as a church; and his time to the Capitol-one mile and threequarters-remains unbeaten to this day. But then he took an advantage-he left out the mile, and only did three-quarters. That is to say, he made a straight cut across-lots, preferring fences and ditches to a crooked road; and when the Speaker got to the Capitol he said he had been in the air so much he felt as if he had made the trip on a comet.

In the evening the Speaker came home afoot for exercise, and got the Genuine towed back behind a quartz wagon. The next day I loaned the animal to the Clerk of the House to go down to the Dana silver mine, six miles, and he walked back for exercise, and got the horse towed. Everybody I loaned him to always walked back; they never could get enough exercise any other way. Still, I continued to loan him to anybody who was willing to borrow him, my idea being to get him crippled, and throw him on the borrower's hands, or killed, and make the borrower pay for him. But somehow nothing ever happened to him. He took chances that no other horse ever took and survived, but he always came out safe. It was his daily habit to try experiments that had always before been considered impossible, but he always got through. Sometimes he miscalculated a little, and did not get his rider through intact, but he always got through himself. Of course I had tried to sell him; but that was a stretch of simplicity which met with little sympathy. The auctioneer stormed up and down the streets on him for four days, dispersing the populace, interrupting business, and destroy

ing children, and never got a bid-at least never any but the eighteen dollar one he hired a notoriously substanceless bummer to make. The people only smiled pleasantly, and restrained their desire to buy, if they had any. Then the auctioneer brought in his bill, and I withdrew the horse from the market. We tried to trade him off at private vendue next, offering him at a sacrifice for second-hand tombstones, old iron, temperance tracts any kind of property. But holders were stiff, and we retired from the market again. I never tried to ride the horse any more. Walking was good enough exercise for a man like me, that had nothing the matter with him except ruptures, internal injuries, and such things. Finally I tried to give him away. But it was a failure. Parties said earthquakes were handy enough on the Pacific coast-they did not wish to own one. As a last resort I offered him to the Governor for the use of the "Brigade.” His face lit up eagerly at first, but toned down again, and he said the thing would be too palpable.

Just then the livery-stable man brought in his bill for six weeks' keeping-stall-room for the horse, fifteen dollars; hay for the horse, two hundred and fifty! The Genuine Mexican Plug had eaten a ton of the article, and the man said he would have eaten a hundred if he had let him.

I will remark here, in all seriousness, that the regular price of hay during that year and a part of the next was really two hundred and fifty dollars a ton. During a part of the previous year it had sold at five hundred a ton, in gold, and during the winter before that, there was such scarcity of the article that in several instances small quantities had brought eight hundred dollars a ton in coin! The consequence might be guessed without my telling it people turned their stock loose to starve, and before the spring arrived Carson and Eagle valleys were almost literally carpeted with their carcases! Any old settler there will verify these statements.

I managed to pay the livery bill. and that same day I gave the Genuine Mexican Plug to a passing Arkansas emigrant whom fortune delivered into my hand. If this ever meets his eye, he will doubtless remember the donation.

Now whoever has had the luck to ride a real Mexican plug will recognize the animal depicted in this chapter, and hardly consider him exaggerated—but the uninitiated will feel justified in regarding his portrait as a fancy sketch, perhaps.

PLAIN LANGUAGE FROM TRUTHFUL JAMES.

TABLE MOUNTAIN, 1870.

BY FRANCIS BRET HARTE.

FRANCIS BRET HARTE is a native of Albany, N. Y., where he was

born in 1837. At the age of seventeen he went to California, where he remained till his thirty-fourth year, and where he was miner, printer, express agent, school teacher, U. S. Marshal's clerk and clerk of the Surveyor-General. He also held a position in the mint. He was a journalist, and at the time he achieved his sudden and extraordinary popularity, he was editor of the Overland Monthly, which he had managed from the beginning. He had already achieved distinction on the Pacific coast as a poet and humorist when he returned to the East in 1871. After lecturing throughout the country, he made New York his home until appointed Commercial Agent at Crefeldt, in Germany, by President Hayes. He was afterwards promoted to the Consulate at Glasgow. He has contributed to the leading periodicals in England and America, and is widely known by translations in every language of Europe.

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.