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Who is Bret Harte ?

• A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready
  It had lain there before him a moment ago--a misshapen piece of brown-stained quartz, interspersed with dull yellow metal; yielding enough to have allowed the points of his pick to penetrate its honeycombed recesses, yet heavy enough to drop from the point of his pick as he endeavored to lift it from the red earth.

• Thankful Blossom
  It was bitterly cold. A northeasterly wind had been stiffening the mud of the morning's thaw into a rigid record of that day's wayfaring on the Baskingridge road. The hoof-prints of cavalry, the deep ruts left by baggage-wagons, and the deeper channels worn by artillery, lay stark and cold in the waning light of an April day.

• Three of Harte  
  The Luck of Roaring Camp, The Outcasts of Poker Flat, The Idyl of Red Gulch
  Perhaps the less said of her the better. She was a coarse, and, it is to be feared, a very sinful woman. But at that time she was the only woman in Roaring Camp, and was just then lying in sore extremity, when she most needed the ministration of her own sex.

• Tales of Trail and Town
  It must be admitted that the civilizing processes of Rough and Ready were not marked by any of the ameliorating conditions of other improved camps. After the discovery of the famous "Eureka" lead, there was the usual influx of gamblers and saloon-keepers; but that was accepted as a matter of course. But it was thought hard that, after a church was built and a new school erected, it should suddenly be found necessary to have doors that locked

• Tales of Harte
  He was shading his eyes with his hand as he gazed over the broad sun-baked expanse of broken "flat" between them and the highroad. They all looked up, and saw the figure of a mounted man, with a courier's bag thrown over his shoulder, galloping towards them.

• The Crusade of the Excelsior
  As the cold light increased, it could be seen that the vessel showed evidence of a long voyage and stress of weather. She had lost one of her spars, and her starboard davits rolled emptily. Nevertheless, her rigging was taut and ship-shape, and her decks scrupulously clean.

• Susy, A Story of the Plains
  Judge Peyton watched his wife crossing the patio or courtyard with her arm around the neck of her adopted daughter "Suzette." A sudden memory crossed his mind of the first day that he had seen them together, -- the day that he had brought the child and her boy-companion -- two estrays from an emigrant train on the plains -- to his wife in camp.

• Stories in Light and Shadow
  Even the postman delivered peaceful invoices to the consul with his side-arms and the air of bringing dispatches from the field of battle; and the consul saluted, and felt for a few moments the whole weight of his consular responsibility.

• From Sand Hill to Pine
  There was a slight jarring through the whole frame of the coach, a grinding and hissing from the brakes, and then a sudden jolt as the vehicle ran upon and recoiled from the taut pole-straps of the now arrested horses. The murmur of a voice in the road was heard, followed by the impatient accents of Yuba Bill, the driver.

• Snow-Bound at Eagle's
  For some moments profound silence and darkness had accompanied a Sierran stage-coach towards the summit. The huge, dim bulk of the vehicle, swaying noiselessly on its straps, glided onward and upward as if obeying some mysterious impulse from behind, so faint and indefinite appeared its relation to the viewless and silent horses ahead. The shadowy trunks of tall trees that seemed to approach the coach windows, look in, and then move hurriedly away, were the only distinguishable objects.

• New Burlesques
  I know not how it was compassed, but that night Rupert of Glasgow was left bound and gagged against the door of the castle, and the night-bell pulled. And that night I was seated on the throne of the S'helpburgs. As I gazed at the Princess Flirtia, glowing in the characteristic beauty of the S'helpburgs, and admired her striking profile, I murmured softly and half audibly: "Her nose is as a tower that looketh toward Damascus."

• In a Hollow of the Hills
  The air was filled with a faint, cool, sodden odor, as of stirred forest depths. In those intervals of silence the darkness seemed to increase in proportion and grow almost palpable. Yet out of this sightless and soundless void now came the tinkle of a spur's rowels, the dry crackling of saddle leathers,

• Devil's Ford
  It was a season of unequalled prosperity in Devil's Ford. The half a dozen cabins scattered along the banks of the North Fork, as if by some overflow of that capricious river, had become augmented during a week of fierce excitement by twenty or thirty others, that were huddled together on the narrow gorge of Devil's Spur, or cast up on its steep sides.

• Drift from Two Shores
  He had lived there alone for a twelvemonth. Although but a few miles from a thriving settlement, during that time his retirement had never been intruded upon, his seclusion remained unbroken. In any other community he might have been the subject of rumor or criticism, but the miners at Camp Rogue and the traders at Trinidad Head, themselves individual and eccentric, were profoundly indifferent to all other forms of eccentricity or heterodoxy that did not come in contact with their own.

• The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales
  When they had moored their unseen boat, they still appeared for some moments to be moving vaguely and aimlessly round the spot where they had disembarked. But as the eye became familiar with the darkness it was seen that they were really advancing inland, yet with a slowness of progression and deviousness of course that appeared inexplicable to the distant spectator.

• In the Carquinez Woods
  And yet this silence was presently broken by a recurring sound like breathing, interrupted occasionally by inarticulate and stertorous gasps. It was not the quick, panting, listening breath of some stealthy feline or canine animal, but indicated a larger, slower, and more powerful organization, whose progress was less watchful and guarded, or as if a fragment of one of the fallen monsters had become animate.

• Sally Dows  
  Suddenly a prolonged yell from the hidden slope beyond--the nearest sound that had yet been heard from that ominous distance--sent them to cover again.

• A First Family of Tasajara  
  As if to accent the words of the speaker a heavy gust of wind at that moment shook the long light wooden structure which served as the general store of Sidon settlement, in Contra Costa.

• A Drift from Redwood Camp
  They had all known him as a shiftless, worthless creature. From the time he first entered Redwood Camp, carrying his entire effects in a red handkerchief on the end of a long-handled shovel, until he lazily drifted out of it on a plank in the terrible inundation of '56, they never expected anything better of him.

• A Protegee Of Jack Hamlin's
  with An Ingenue Of The Sierras, The Reformation Of James Reddy, The Heir Of The Mchulishes, An Episode Of West Woodlands, The Home-Coming Of Jim Wilkes
  The steamer Silveropolis was sharply and steadily cleaving the broad, placid shallows of the Sacramento River. A large wave like an eagre, diverging from its bow, was extending to either bank, swamping the tules and threatening to submerge the lower levees.

• A Phyllis Of The Sierras
  Where the great highway of the Sierras nears the summit, and the pines begin to show sterile reaches of rock and waste in their drawn-up files, there are signs of occasional departures from the main road, as if the weary traveller had at times succumbed to the long ascent

• Tales Of The Argonauts
  with The Rose Of Tuolumne, A Passage In The Life Of Mr. John Oakhurst, Wan Lee The Pagan, How Old Man Plunkett Went Home, The Fool Of Five Forks, Baby Sylvester, An Episode Of Fiddletown, A Jersey Centenarian
  It was nearly two o'clock in the morning. The lights were out in Robinson's Hall, where there had been dancing and revelry; and the moon, riding high, painted the black windows with silver. The cavalcade, that an hour ago had shocked the sedate pines with song and laughter, were all dispersed.

• A Sappho Of Green Springs
  with The Chatelaine Of Burnt Ridge, Through The Santa Clara Wheat, A Maecenas Of The Pacific Slope
  The door of the editorial room of the "Excelsior Magazine" began to creak painfully under the hesitating pressure of an uncertain and unfamiliar hand. This continued until with a start of irritation the editor faced directly about, throwing his leg over the arm of his chair with a certain youthful dexterity. With one hand gripping its back, the other still grasping a proof-slip, and his pencil in his mouth, he stared at the intruder.

• Clarence
  He had been married scarcely a year, yet even in the illusions of the honeymoon the woman, older than himself, and the widow of his old patron, had half unconsciously reasserted herself, and slipped back into the domination of her old position.

• Cressy
  As the master of the Indian Spring school emerged from the pine woods into the little clearing before the schoolhouse, he stopped whistling, put his hat less jauntily on his head, threw away some wild flowers he had gathered on his way, and otherwise assumed the severe demeanor of his profession and his mature age

• Found At Blazing Star
  The rain had only ceased with the gray streaks of morning at Blazing Star, and the settlement awoke to a moral sense of cleanliness, and the finding of forgotten knives, tin cups, and smaller camp utensils

• Flip: A California Romance
  Just where the track of the Los Gatos road streams on and upward like the sinuous trail of a fiery rocket until it is extinguished in the blue shadows of the Coast Range, there is an embayed terrace near the summit, hedged by dwarf firs.

• On The Frontier
  with At The Mission Of San Carmel, A Blue Grass Penelope, Left Out On Lone Star Mountain
  There were four voices, but the hail appeared weak and ineffectual, like a cry in a dream, and seemed hardly to reach beyond the surf before it was suffocated in the creeping cloud. A silence followed, but no response.

• Jeff Briggs's Love Story
  A loose, shambling, disjointed, hastily built structure--representing the worst features of Pioneer renaissance--it rattled its loose window-sashes like chattering teeth, banged its ill-hung shutters, and admitted so much of the invading storm, that it might have blown up or blown down with equal facility.

• Openings In The Old Trail
  It was high hot noon on the Casket Ridge. Its very scant shade was restricted to a few dwarf Scotch firs, and was so perpendicularly cast that Leonidas Boone, seeking shelter from the heat, was obliged to draw himself up under one of them, as if it were an umbrella.

• The Queen Of The Pirate Isle
  She was only nine years old, inclined to plumpness and good humor, deprecated violence, and had never been to sea.

• Urban Sketches
  with A Venerable Impostor, From A Balcony, Melons, Surprising Adventures Of Master Charles Summerton, Sidewalkings, A Boy's Dog, Charitable Reminiscences, "Seeing The Steamer Off" Neighborhoods I Have Moved From, My Suburban Residence, On A Vulgar Little Boy, Waiting For The Ship
  But as I lean over its balustrade to-night--a night rare in its kindness and beauty--and watch the fiery ashes of my cigar drop into the abysmal darkness below, I am inclined to take back the whole of that preceding paragraph

• A Ship of '49
  It had rained so persistently in San Francisco during the first week of January, 1854, that a certain quagmire in the roadway of Long Wharf had become impassable, and a plank was thrown over its dangerous depth. Indeed, so treacherous was the spot that it was alleged, on good authority, that a hastily embarking traveler had once hopelessly lost his portmanteau, and was fain to dispose of his entire interest in it for the sum of two dollars and fifty cents to a speculative stranger on the wharf.

• Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands
  with How Santa Claus Came To Simpson's Bar, The Princess Bob And Her Friends, The Iliad Of Sandy Bar, Mr. Thompson's Prodigal, The Romance Or Madrono Hollow, The Poet Of Sierra Flat, The Christmas Gift That Came To Rupert
  Perhaps it might be said that the first stir of life was in the bar-rooms. A few birds twittered in the sycamores at the roadside, but long before that glasses had clicked and bottles gurgled in the saloon of the Mansion House.

• The Argonauts Of North Liberty
  As the horror-stricken official turned angrily, the figure of a man glided from the shadow of the stairs below the organ loft, and vanished through the open door. Before the sexton could follow, the figure of a woman slipped out of the same portal

• The Bell-Ringer Of Angel's
  with Johnnyboy, Young Robin Gray, The Sheriff Of Siskyou, A Rose Of Glenbogie, The Mystery Of The Hacienda, Chu Chu, My First Book
  It was about eleven o'clock one morning, and Madison Wayne was at work alone on the Bar. Clad in a dark gray jersey and white duck trousers rolled up over high india-rubber boots, he looked not unlike a peaceful fisherman digging stakes for his nets

• The Three Partners
  There was something in the speaker's tone which seemed to touch a common chord in their natures, and this was voiced by Barker with sudden and almost pathetic earnestness. "I tell you what, boys, we ought to swear here to-night to always stand by each other

• The Story Of A Mine
  It appeared that the bottle did not contain aguardiente, but had lately been filled in a tavern near Tres Pinos by an Irishman who sold his American whisky under that pleasing Castilian title. Nevertheless Concho had already nearly emptied the bottle

• Trent's Trust And Other Stories
  with Mr. Macglowrie's Widow, A Ward Of Colonel Starbottle, Prosper's "Old Mother", The Convalescence Of Jack Hamlin, A Pupil Of Chestnut Ridge, Dick Boyle's Business Card
  A rising wind, which had rocked the boat for the last few hours, had now developed into a strong sou'wester, with torrents of rain which swept the roadway.

• The Twins of Table Mountain
  with An Heiress Of Red Dog, The Great Deadwood Mystery, A Legend Of Sammtstadt, Views From A German Spion
  In the thick darkness that clothed the mountain that night, the human figure would have been lost, or confounded with the outlines of outlying bowlders, which at such times took upon themselves the vague semblance of men and animals. Hence the voices in the following colloquy seemed the more grotesque and incongruous from being the apparent expression of an upright monolith

• Under the Redwoods
  with Jimmy's Big Brother From California, The Youngest Miss Piper, A Widow Of The Santa Ana Valley, The Mermaid Of Lighthouse Point, Under The Eaves, How Reuben Allen "Saw Life" In San Francisco, Three Vagabonds Of Trinidad, A Vision Of The Fountain, A Romance Of The Line, Bohemian Days In San Francisco
  As night crept up from the valley that stormy afternoon, Sawyer's Ledge was at first quite blotted out by wind and rain, but presently reappeared in little nebulous star-like points along the mountain side

• Condensed novels
  Norwood Park was the adjacent estate,--a lordly domain dotted with red deer and black trunks, but scrupulously kept with gravelled roads as hard and blue as steel. There Little was strolling one summer morning, meditating on a new top with concealed springs. At a little distance before him he saw the flutter of lace and ribbons. A young lady, a very young lady,--say of seven summers,-- tricked out in the crying abominations of the present fashion, stood beside a low bush.

• By Shore and Sedge
  The large tent had been filled, and between the exhortations a certain gloomy enthusiasm had been kept up by singing, which had the effect of continuing in an easy, rhythmical, impersonal, and irresponsible way the sympathies of the meeting.

• A Waif Of The Plains
  As his stepmother had not even taken leave of him, but had entrusted his departure to the relative with whom he had been lately living, it was considered as an act of "riddance," and accepted as such by her party, and even vaguely acquiesced in by the boy himself.

• A Ward of the Golden Gate
  As she kept her way along the corridor and ascended an iron staircase, she was passed by others more preoccupied in business at the various public offices. One of these visitors, however, stopped as if struck by some fancied resemblance in her appearance, turned, and followed her. But when she halted before a door marked "Mayor's Office," he paused also, and, with a look of half humorous bewilderment and a slight glance around him as if seeking for some one to whom to impart his arch fancy, he turned away.

• Harte Poems
  Harte became the first editor of the Overland Monthly. "The Luck of Roaring Camp" published in the Overland Monthly brought him instant and wide fame. He was thereafter requested to contribute poems and articles to a number of publications.

Pages Updated On: 1-September-- MMI
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