(SIMPSON'S BAR, 1858)
So you've kem 'yer agen,
And one answer won't do?
Well, of all the derned men
That I've struck, it is you.
O Sal! 'yer's that derned fool from Simpson's, cavortin' round 'yer
in the dew.
Kem in, ef you WILL.
Thar,—quit! Take a cheer.
Not that; you can't fill
Them theer cushings this year,—
For that cheer was my old man's, Joe Simpson, and they don't make
such men about 'yer.
He was tall, was my Jack,
And as strong as a tree.
Thar's his gun on the rack,—
Jest you heft it, and see.
And YOU come a courtin' his widder! Lord! where can that critter,
Sal, be!
You'd fill my Jack's place?
And a man of your size,—
With no baird to his face,
Nor a snap to his eyes,
And nary—Sho! thar! I was foolin',—I was, Joe, for sartain,—don't
rise.
Sit down. Law! why, sho!
I'm as weak as a gal.
Sal! Don't you go, Joe,
Or I'll faint,—sure, I shall.
Sit down,—ANYWHEER, where you like, Joe,—in that cheer, if you
choose,—Lord! where's Sal?
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 quite 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,—that's wax.
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,—
Which the same I am free to maintain.
THE SOCIETY UPON THE STANISLAUS
I reside at Table Mountain, and my name is Truthful James;
I am not up to small deceit or any sinful games;
And I'll tell in simple language what I know about the row
That broke up our Society upon the Stanislow.
But first I would remark, that it is not a proper plan
For any scientific gent to whale his fellow-man,
And, if a member don't agree with his peculiar whim,
To lay for that same member for to "put a head" on him.
Now nothing could be finer or more beautiful to see
Than the first six months' proceedings of that same Society,
Till Brown of Calaveras brought a lot of fossil bones
That he found within a tunnel near the tenement of Jones.
Then Brown he read a paper, and he reconstructed there,
From those same bones, an animal that was extremely rare;
And Jones then asked the Chair for a suspension of the rules,
Till he could prove that those same bones was one of his lost mules.
Then Brown he smiled a bitter smile, and said he was at fault,
It seemed he had been trespassing on Jones's family vault;
He was a most sarcastic man, this quiet Mr. Brown,
And on several occasions he had cleaned out the town.
Now I hold it is not decent for a scientific gent
To say another is an ass,—at least, to all intent;
Nor should the individual who happens to be meant
Reply by heaving rocks at him, to any great extent.
Then Abner Dean of Angel's raised a point of order, when
A chunk of old red sandstone took him in the abdomen,
And he smiled a kind of sickly smile, and curled up on the floor,
And the subsequent proceedings interested him no more.
For, in less time than I write it, every member did engage
In a warfare with the remnants of a palaeozoic age;
And the way they heaved those fossils in their anger was a sin,
Till the skull of an old mammoth caved the head of Thompson in.
And this is all I have to say of these improper games,
For I live at Table Mountain, and my name is Truthful James;
And I've told in simple language what I know about the row
That broke up our Society upon the Stanislow.
LUKE
(IN THE COLORADO PARK, 1873)
Wot's that you're readin'?—a novel? A novel!—well, darn my skin!
You a man grown and bearded and histin' such stuff ez that in—
Stuff about gals and their sweethearts! No wonder you're thin ez a
knife.
Look at me—clar two hundred—and never read one in my life!
That's my opinion o' novels. And ez to their lyin' round here,
They belong to the Jedge's daughter—the Jedge who came up last year
On account of his lungs and the mountains and the balsam o' pine and
fir;
And his daughter—well, she read novels, and that's what's the
matter with her.
Yet she was sweet on the Jedge, and stuck by him day and night,
Alone in the cabin up 'yer—till she grew like a ghost, all white.
She wus only a slip of a thing, ez light and ez up and away
Ez rifle smoke blown through the woods, but she wasn't my kind—no
way!
Speakin' o' gals, d'ye mind that house ez you rise the hill,
A mile and a half from White's, and jist above Mattingly's mill?
You do? Well now THAR's a gal! What! you saw her? Oh, come now,
thar! quit!
She was only bedevlin' you boys, for to me she don't cotton one bit.
Now she's what I call a gal—ez pretty and plump ez a quail;
Teeth ez white ez a hound's, and they'd go through a ten-penny nail;
Eyes that kin snap like a cap. So she asked to know "whar I was hid?"
She did! Oh, it's jist like her sass, for she's peart ez a Katydid.
But what was I talking of?—Oh! the Jedge and his daughter—she read
Novels the whole day long, and I reckon she read them abed;
And sometimes she read them out loud to the Jedge on the porch where
he sat,
And 'twas how "Lord Augustus" said this, and how "Lady Blanche" she
said that.
But the sickest of all that I heerd was a yarn thet they read 'bout
a chap,
"Leather-stocking" by name, and a hunter chock full o' the greenest
o' sap;
And they asked me to hear, but I says, "Miss Mabel, not any for me;
When I likes I kin sling my own lies, and thet chap and I shouldn't
agree."
Yet somehow or other that gal allus said that I brought her to mind
Of folks about whom she had read, or suthin belike of thet kind,
And thar warn't no end o' the names that she give me thet summer up
here—
"Robin Hood," "Leather-stocking" "Rob Roy,"—Oh, I tell you, the
critter was queer!
And yet, ef she hadn't been spiled, she was harmless enough in her
way;
She could jabber in French to her dad, and they said that she knew
how to play;
And she worked me that shot-pouch up thar, which the man doesn't
live ez kin use;
And slippers—you see 'em down 'yer—ez would cradle an Injin's
papoose.
Yet along o' them novels, you see, she was wastin' and mopin' away,
And then she got shy with her tongue, and at last she had nothin' to
say;
And whenever I happened around, her face it was hid by a book,
And it warn't till the day she left that she give me ez much ez a
look.
And this was the way it was. It was night when I kem up here
To say to 'em all "good-by," for I reckoned to go for deer
At "sun up" the day they left. So I shook 'em all round by the hand,
'Cept Mabel, and she was sick, ez they give me to understand.
But jist ez I passed the house next morning at dawn, some one,
Like a little waver o' mist got up on the hill with the sun;
Miss Mabel it was, alone—all wrapped in a mantle o' lace—
And she stood there straight in the road, with a touch o' the sun in
her face.
And she looked me right in the eye—I'd seen suthin' like it before
When I hunted a wounded doe to the edge o' the Clear Lake Shore,
And I had my knee on its neck, and I jist was raisin' my knife,
When it give me a look like that, and—well, it got off with its life.
"We are going to-day," she said, "and I thought I would say good-by
To you in your own house, Luke—these woods and the bright blue sky!
You've always been kind to us, Luke, and papa has found you still
As good as the air he breathes, and wholesome as Laurel Tree Hill.
"And we'll always think of you, Luke, as the thing we could not take
away,—
The balsam that dwells in the woods, the rainbow that lives in the
spray.
And you'll sometimes think of ME, Luke, as you know you once used to
say,
A rifle smoke blown through the woods, a moment, but never to stay."
And then we shook hands. She turned, but a-suddent she tottered and
fell,
And I caught her sharp by the waist, and held her a minit. Well,
It was only a minit, you know, thet ez cold and ez white she lay
Ez a snowflake here on my breast, and then—well, she melted away—
And was gone.... And thar are her books; but I says not any for me;
Good enough may be for some, but them and I mightn't agree.
They spiled a decent gal ez might hev made some chap a wife,
And look at me!—clar two hundred—and never read one in my life!