Atlantic Monthly. Among his subsequent poems and sketches were A Greyport Legend, A Newport Legend, The Princess, Bob, How Santa Claus came to Simpson's Bar, etc. In 1873, he wrote a novelette for Scribner's Monthly, entitled An Episode of Fiddletown. Mr. Harte has issued seven volumes of prose and poetry. The Lost Galleon, with some fugitive verses, appeared in San Francisco, about 1867; Condensed Novels, and Other Papers, at New York in 1867, and a revised edition at Boston four years later; Luck of Roaring Camp, and Other Šketches, 1870; Poems, 1870; East and West Poems, 1871; Red Line and Diamond editions of Complete Poetical Works, 1873; Mrs. Skagg's Husband, and Other Sketches, 1873.

In the main, these books contain reprints of the California writings which made Bret Harte's reputation by their intuitive insight into the heart of our common humanity. Besides Her Letter, Truthful James' Answer, and Dickens in Camp, some of the poems in dialect, are peculiarly fascinating, as Dow's Flat, In the Tunnel, and Alkali Station. Every friend, however, must regret the insertion of such an unworthy parody on Mr. Whittier's Maud Muller as Mrs. Judge Jenkins. The Condensed Novels contain pungent caricatures of the mannerisms of leading novelists, including Chas. Reade, Benjamin Disraeli, Cooper, Lever, Dumas, Bulwer, Dickens, Marryatt, Wilkie Collins, Victor Hugo, Michelet, etc. A number of the sketches have been translated into French and German, and the latter translator, the old poet Ferdinand Freiligrath, pays in his preface this tribute to the peculiar excellence of the young American author:

"Nevertheless he remains what he is the Californian and the gold-digger. But the gold for which he has dug, and which he found, is not the gold in the bed of rivers, not the gold in veins of mountains; it is the gold of love, of goodness, of fidelity, of humanity, which even in rude and wild hearts, even under the rubbish of vices and sins, remains forever uneradicated from the human heart. That he there searched for this gold, that he found it there and triumphantly exhibited it to the world, is his greatness and his merit."

HER LETTER FROM POEMS.

I'm sitting alone by the fire,
Dressed just as I came from the dance,
In a robe even you would admire,

It cost a cool thousand in France;
I'm be-diamonded out of all reason,
My hair is done up in a cue:

In short, sir, "the belle of the season
Is wasting an hour on you.

A dozen engagements I've broken:
I left in the midst of a set:

Likewise a proposal, half spoken,

that

That waits on the stairs for me yet. They say he'll be rich, - when he grows up,

And then he adores me indeed.

And you, sir, are turning your nose up,
Three thousand miles off, as you read.

"And how do I like my position?"
"And what do I think of New York?"

*Scribner's Monthly, June, 1873.

"And now, in my higher ambition,
With whom do I waltz, flirt, or talk?"
"And is n't it nice to have riches,

And diamonds, and silks, and all that?”
"And are n't it a change to the ditches
And tunnels of Poverty Flat?"
Well, yes, if you saw us out driving
Each day in the park, four-in-hand,
If you saw poor dear mamma contriving
To look supernaturally grand,
If you saw papa's pictures, as taken
By Brady, and tinted at that, -
You'd never suspect he sold bacon
And flour at Poverty Flat.
And yet, just this moment, when sitting
In the glare of the grand chandelier,
In the bustle and glitter befitting
The finest soirée of the year,'
In the mists of a gaze de Chambéry,

And the hum of the smallest of talk,
Somehow, Joe, I thought of the “ Ferry,
And the dance that we had on "The Fork";
Of Harrison's barn, with its muster

Of flags festooned over the wall;
Of the candles that shed their soft lustre
And tallow on head-dress and shawl;
Of the steps that we took to one fiddle;

Of the dress of my queer vis-à-vis ;
And how I once went down the middle
With the man who shot Sandy McGee;
Of the moon that was quietly sleeping

On the hill, when the time came to go:
Of the few baby peaks that were peeping
From under their bedclothes of snow;
Of that ride, that to me was the rarest ;
Of the something you said at the gate.
Ah, Joe, then I was n't an heiress

To "the best-paying lead in the State."
Well, well, it's all past; yet it's funny
To think, as I stood in the glare
Of fashion and beauty and money

That I should be thinking, right there,
Of some one who breasted high-water,

And swam the North Fork, and all that,
Just to dance with old Folinsbee's daughter,
The Lily of Poverty Flat.

But goodness! what nonsense I'm writing!
(Mamma says my taste still is low,)
Instead of my triumphs reciting,
I'm spooning on Joseph, heigh-ho!
And I'm to be "finished" by travel,
Whatever's the meaning of that,
O, why did papa strike pay gravel
In drifting on Poverty Flat?

Good night, here's the end of my paper;
Good night, if the longitude please,
For may be, while wasting my taper,
Your sun's climbing over the trees.

But know, if you haven't got riches,
And are poor, dearest Joe, and all that,
That my heart's somewhere there in the ditches,
And you've struck it, on Poverty Flat.

For his arm it was broken quite recent,

And has something gone wrong with his lungWhich is why it is proper and decent

I should write what he runs off his tongue: First, he says, Miss, he's read through your letter To the end, and the end came too soon; That a slight illness kept him your debtor (Which for weeks he was wild as a loon); That his spirits are buoyant as yours is;

That with you, Miss, he challenges Fate
(Which the language that invalid uses
At times it were vain to relate).

And he says that the mountains are fairer
For once being held in your thought;
That each rock holds a wealth that is rarer
Than ever by gold-seeker sought

(Which are words he would put in these pages, By a party not given to guile;

Which the same not, at date, paying wages,
Might produce in the sinful a smile).

He remembers the ball at the Ferry,

And the ride, and the gate, and the vow, And the rose that you gave him,

Same rose he is treasuring now

that very

(Which his blanket he's kicked on his trunk, Miss, And insists on his legs being free;

And his language to me from his bunk, Miss,
Is frequent and painful and free);

He hopes you are wearing no willows,

But are happy and gay all the while;

That he knows (which this dodging of pillows
Imparts but small ease to the style,

And the same you will pardon), he knows, Miss,
That, though parted by many a mile,
Yet were he lying under the snows, Miss,
They'd melt into tears at your smile.

And you'll still think of him in your pleasures,
In your brief twilight dreams of the past;
In this green laurel-spray that he treasures,
It was plucked where your parting was last;
In this specimen, but a small trifle,
It will do for a pin for your shawl
(Which the truth not to wickedly stifle

Was his last week's "clean up,”—and his all).

He's asleep, which the same might seem strange, Miss,

Were it not that I scorn to deny

That I raised his last dose, for a change, Miss,
In view that his fever was high;

But he lies there quite peaceful and pensive.
And now, my respects, Miss, to you;
Which my language, although comprehensive,
Might seem to be freedom, it's true.

Which I have a small favor to ask you,

As concerns a bull-pup, which the same,
If the duty would not overtask you,
You would please to procure for me, game ;
And send per express to the Flat, Miss,

Which they say York is famed for the breed, Which though words of deceit may be that, Miss, I'll trust to your taste, Miss, indeed.

P. S.-Which this same interfering

Into other folks' way I despise;

Yet if it so be I was hearing

That it's just empty pockets as lies Betwixt you and Joseph, it follers, That, having no family claims,

Here's my pile; which it's six hundred dollars, As is yours, with respects,

TRUTHFUL JAMES.

**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 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.

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."

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,

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,

that's wax.

Which the same I am free to maintain.

**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 did n't back down
When the rebels rode through his native town:
But held his own in the fight next day,
When all his townsfolk ran away.
That was in July, sixty-three,
The very day that General Lee,
Flower of Southern chivalry,

Baffled and beaten, backward reeled

From a stubborn Meade and a barren field.
I might tell how, but the day before,
John Burns stood at his cottage door,
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, in 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;

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 ploughed 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;
The cattle bellowed on the plain,

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

Just where the tide of 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;
While Burns, unmindful of jeer and scoff,
Stood there picking the rebels off,
With his long brown rifle, and bell-crown hat,
And the swallow-tails they were laughing at.

'T was but 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
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.

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:
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!

They ran through the streets of the seaport town;
They peered from the decks of the ships that lay:
The cold sea-fog that came whitening down
Was never as cold or white as they.

Ho, Starbuck and Pinckney and Tenterden !
Run for your shallops, gather your men,
Scatter your boats on the lower bay."
Good cause for fear! In the thick midday
The hulk that lay by the rotting pier,
Filled with the children in happy play,
Parted its moorings, and drifted clear,
Drifted clear beyond the reach or call,-
Thirteen children they were in all,
All adrift in the lower bay!
Said a hard-faced skipper, "God help us all!
She will not float till the turning tide!
Said his wife, "My darling will hear my call,
Whether in sea or heaven she bide!"

And she lifted a quavering voice and high,
Wild and strange as a sea-bird's cry,

Till they shuddered and wondered at her side. The fog drove down on each laboring crew, Veiled each from each and the sky and shore: There was not a sound but the breath they drew, And the lap of water and creak of oar;

And they felt the breath of the downs, fresh blown

O'er leagues of clover and cold gray stone,

But not from the lips that had gone before.

They come no more. But they tell the tale,
That, when fogs are thick on the harbor reef,
The mackerel fishers shorten sail;
For the signal they know will bring relief ·

Wandered and lost their way.

And so in mountain solitudes

As by some spell divine

o'ertaken

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-vines' incense all the pensive glory
That fills the Kentish hills.

And on that grave where English oak and holly
And laurel wreaths intwine,

Deem it not all a too presumptuous folly, -
This spray of Western pine!

JULY, 1870.

**TENNESSEE'S PARTNER- FROM THE LUCK OF ROARING

CAMP.

I do not think that we ever knew his real name. Our ignorance of it certainly never gave us any social inconvenience, for at Sandy Bar in 1854 most men were christened anew. Sometimes these appellatives were derived from some distinctiveness of dress, as in the case of Dungaree Jack"; or from some peculiarity of habit, as shown in "Saleratus Bill," so called from an un

due proportion of that chemical in his daily bread; or from some unlucky slip, as exhibited in The Iron Pirate," a mild, inoffensive man, who earned that baleful title by his unfortunate mispronunciation of the term " iron pyrites." Perhaps this may have been the beginning of a rude heraldry; but I am constrained to think that it was because a man's real name in that day rested solely upon his own unsupported statement. "Call yourself Clifford, do you?" said Boston, addressing a timid new-comer with infinite scorn; hell is full of such Cliffords!" He then introduced the unfortunate man, whose name happened to be really Clifford, as "Jay-bird Charley,' an unhallowed inspiration of the moment that clung to him ever after.

But to return to Tennessee's Partner, whom we never knew by any other than this relative title; that he had ever existed as a separate and distinct individuality we only learned later. It seems that in 1853 he left Poker Flat to go to San Francisco, ostensibly to procure a wife. He never got any farther than Stockton. At that place he was attracted by a young person who waited upon the table at the hotel where he took his meals. One morning he said something to her which caused her to smile not unkindly, to somewhat coquettishly break a plate of toast over his upturned, serious, simple face, and to retreat to the kitchen. followed her, and emerged a few moments later, covered with more toast and victory. That day. week they were married by a Justice of the Peace, and returned to Poker Flat. I am aware that something more might be made of this episode, but I prefer to tell it as it was current at Sandy Bar, - in the gulches and bar-rooms where all sentiment was modified by a strong sense of humor.

He

Of their married felicity but little is known, perhaps for the reason that Tennessee, then living with his partner, one day took occasion to say something to the bride on his own account, at which, it is said, she smiled not unkindly and chastely retreated, this time as far as Marysville, where Tennessee followed her, and where they went to housekeeping without the aid of a Justice of the Peace. Tennessee's Partner took the loss of his wife simply and seriously, as was his fashion. But to everybody's surprise, when Tennessee one day returned from Marysville, without his partner's wife, she having smiled and retreated with somebody else, Tennessee's Partner was the first man to shake his hand and greet him with affection. The boys who had gathered in the cañon to see the shooting were naturally indignant. Their indignation might have found vent in sarcasm but for a certain look in Tennessee's Partner's eye that indicated a lack of humorous appreciation. In fact, he was & grave man, with a steady application to practical detail which was unpleasant in a difficulty.

In

Meanwhile a popular feeling against Tennessee had grown up on the Bar. He was known to be a gambler; he was suspected to be a thief. these suspicions Tennessee's Partner was equally compromised; his continued intimacy with Tennessee after the affair above quoted could only be accounted for on the hypothesis of a copartnership of crime. At last Tennessee's guilt became flagrant. One day he overtook a stranger on his way to Red Dog. The stranger afterward related that Tennessee beguiled the time with interesting anecdote and reminiscence, but illogically concluded the interview in the following words: "And