Complete Poetical Works
Although Bret Harte's name is identified with Californian life, it was not till he was fifteen that the author of Plain Language from Truthful James saw the country of his adoption. Francis Bret Harte, to give the full name which he carried till he became famous, was born at Albany, New York, August 25, 1839. He went with his widowed mother to California in 1854, and was thrown as a young man into the hurly-burly which he more than any other writer has made real to distant and later people. He was by turns a miner, school-teacher, express messenger, printer, and journalist. The types which live again in his pages are thus not only what he observed, but what he himself impersonated in his own experience.
He began trying his pen in The Golden Era of San Francisco, where he was working as a compositor; and when The Californian, edited by Charles Henry Webb, was started in 1864 as a literary newspaper, he was one of a group of brilliant young fellows—Mark Twain, Charles Warren Stoddard, Webb himself, and Prentice Mulford—who gave at once a new interest in California beside what mining and agriculture caused. Here in an early number appeared The Ballad of the Emeu, and he contributed many poems, grave and gay, as well as prose in a great variety of form. At the same time he was appointed Secretary of the United States Branch Mint at San Francisco, holding the office till 1870.
But Bret Harte's great opportunity came when The Overland Monthly was established in 1868 by Anton Roman. This magazine was the outgrowth of the racy, exuberant literary spirit which had already found free expression in the journals named. An eager ambition to lift all the new life of the Pacific into a recognized place in the world of letters made the young men we have named put their wits together in a monthly magazine which should rival the Atlantic in Boston and Blackwood in Edinburgh. The name was easily had, and for a sign manual on the cover some one drew a grizzly bear, that formidable exemplar of Californian wildness. But the design did not quite satisfy, until Bret Harte, with a felicitous stroke, drew two parallel lines just before the feet of the halting brute. Now it was the grizzly of the wilderness drawing back before the railway of civilization, and the picture was complete as an emblem.
Bret Harte
COMPLETE POETICAL WORKS
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
POEMS
I. NATIONAL
JOHN BURNS OF GETTYSBURG
"HOW ARE YOU, SANITARY?"
BATTLE BUNNY
THE REVEILLE
OUR PRIVILEGE
RELIEVING GUARD
THE GODDESS
ON A PEN OF THOMAS STARR KING
A SECOND REVIEW OF THE GRAND ARMY
THE COPPERHEAD
A SANITARY MESSAGE
THE OLD MAJOR EXPLAINS
CALIFORNIA'S GREETING TO SEWARD
THE AGED STRANGER
THE IDYL OF BATTLE HOLLOW
CALDWELL OF SPRINGFIELD
POEM
MISS BLANCHE SAYS
AN ARCTIC VISION
ST. THOMAS
OFF SCARBOROUGH
CADET GREY
II. SPANISH IDYLS AND LEGENDS
THE MIRACLE OF PADRE JUNIPERO
THE WONDERFUL SPRING OF SAN JOAQUIN
THE ANGELUS
CONCEPCION DE ARGUELLO
"FOR THE KING"
RAMON
DON DIEGO OF THE SOUTH
AT THE HACIENDA
FRIAR PEDRO'S RIDE
IN THE MISSION GARDEN
THE LOST GALLEON*
III. IN DIALECT
"JIM"
CHIQUITA
DOW'S FLAT
IN THE TUNNEL
"CICELY"
PENELOPE
PLAIN LANGUAGE FROM TRUTHFUL JAMES
THE SOCIETY UPON THE STANISLAUS
LUKE
"THE BABES IN THE WOODS"
THE LATEST CHINESE OUTRAGE
TRUTHFUL JAMES TO THE EDITOR
AN IDYL OF THE ROAD
THOMPSON OF ANGELS
THE HAWK'S NEST
HER LETTER
HIS ANSWER TO "HER LETTER"
"THE RETURN OF BELISARIUS"
FURTHER LANGUAGE FROM TRUTHFUL JAMES
AFTER THE ACCIDENT
THE GHOST THAT JIM SAW
"SEVENTY-NINE"
THE STAGE-DRIVER'S STORY
A QUESTION OF PRIVILEGE
THE THOUGHT-READER OF ANGELS
THE SPELLING BEE AT ANGELS
ARTEMIS IN SIERRA
JACK OF THE TULES
IV. MISCELLANEOUS
A GREYPORT LEGEND
A NEWPORT ROMANCE
SAN FRANCISCO
THE MOUNTAIN HEART'S-EASE
GRIZZLY.
MADRONO
COYOTE
TO A SEA-BIRD
WHAT THE CHIMNEY SANG
DICKENS IN CAMP
"TWENTY YEARS"
FATE
GRANDMOTHER TENTERDEN
GUILD'S SIGNAL
ASPIRING MISS DE LAINE
A LEGEND OF COLOGNE
THE TALE OF A PONY
ON A CONE OF THE BIG TREES
LONE MOUNTAIN
ALNASCHAR
THE TWO SHIPS
ADDRESS
DOLLY VARDEN
TELEMACHUS VERSUS MENTOR
WHAT THE WOLF REALLY SAID TO LITTLE RED RIDING-HOOD
HALF AN HOUR BEFORE SUPPER
WHAT THE BULLET SANG
THE OLD CAMP-FIRE
THE STATION-MASTER OF LONE PRAIRIE
THE MISSION BELLS OF MONTEREY
"CROTALUS"
ON WILLIAM FRANCIS BARTLETT
THE BIRDS OF CIRENCESTER
LINES TO A PORTRAIT, BY A SUPERIOR PERSON
HER LAST LETTER
V. PARODIES
BEFORE THE CURTAIN
TO THE PLIOCENE SKULL*
THE BALLAD OF MR. COOKE
THE BALLAD OF THE EMEU
MRS. JUDGE JENKINS
A GEOLOGICAL MADRIGAL
AVITOR
THE WILLOWS
NORTH BEACH
THE LOST TAILS OF MILETUS
THE RITUALIST
A MORAL VINDICATOR
CALIFORNIA MADRIGAL
WHAT THE ENGINES SAID
THE LEGENDS OF THE RHINE
SONGS WITHOUT SENSE
MASTER JOHNNY'S NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR
MISS EDITH'S MODEST REQUEST
MISS EDITH MAKES IT PLEASANT FOR BROTHER JACK
MISS EDITH MAKES ANOTHER FRIEND
WHAT MISS EDITH SAW FROM HER WINDOW
ON THE LANDING
NOTES