His own style, as finally formed, leaves little to be desired; it is clear, flexible, virile, laconic and withal graceful. Its full meaning is given to every word, and occasionally, like all original masters of prose, he imparts into a familiar word a racier significance than it had possessed before. His genius is nowhere more unmistakable than in the handling of his stories, which is terse to the point of severity, yet wholly adequate; everything necessary to the matter in hand is told, but with an economy of word and phrase that betokens a powerful and radical conception.—Julian Hawthorne and Leonard Lemmon, American Literature.
Tennessee’s Partner, John Oakhurst, Yuba Bill, Kentucky, are as long-lived, seemingly, as any characters in nineteenth century fiction.... What gives these characters their lasting power? Why does that highly melodramatic tragedy in the hills above Poker Flat, with its stagy reformations, and contrasts of black sinner and white innocent, hold you spellbound at the thirtieth as at the first reading? Why does Tennessee’s Partner make you wish to grasp him by the hand? Bret Harte believed, apparently, that it was his realism which did it.... But we do not wait to be told by Californians, who still remember the red-shirt period, that Roaring Camp is not realism.... Not the realism, but the idealization, of this life of the Argonauts was the prize Bret Harte gained.—Henry S. Canby, The Short Story in English.
FURTHER REFERENCES FOR READING ON HARTE
Early Recollections of Bret Harte, C. W. Stoddard, Atlantic Monthly, vol. 78; Bret Harte in California, Noah Brooks, Century Magazine, vol. 58; American Humor and Bret Harte, G. K. Chesterton, Critic, vol. 41; Life of Bret Harte, T. E. Pemberton (1903); Bret Harte, H. W. Boynton, in Contemporary Men of Letters series (1905); Life of Bret Harte, H. C. Merwin (1911).
THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT
BY BRET HARTE
Central character.
As Mr. John Oakhurst, gambler, stepped into the main street of Poker Flat on the morning of the twenty-third of November, 1850, he was conscious of a change in its Crisis at once forecasted. moral atmosphere since the preceding night. Two or three men, conversing earnestly together, ceased as he approached, and exchanged significant Preliminary setting. glances. There was a Sabbath lull in the air, which, in a settlement unused to Sabbath influences, looked ominous.
Physical delineation interwoven with the progress of the story.
2. Mr. Oakhurst’s calm, handsome face betrayed small concern of these indications. Whether he was conscious of any predisposing cause, was another question. “I reckon Summary of tone of the fundamental situation. Foundation Crisis. they’re after somebody,” he reflected; “likely it’s me.” He returned to his pocket the handkerchief with which he had been whipping away the red dust of Poker Flat from his neat boots, and quietly discharged his mind of any further conjecture.