Chapter 3

I

Where the sun sinks through leagues of arid sky, Where the sun dies o'er leagues of arid plain, Where the dead bones of wasted rivers lie, Trailed from their channels in yon mountain chain; Where day by day naught takes the wearied eye But the low-rimming mountains, sharply based On the dead levels, moving far or nigh, As the sick vision wanders o'er the waste, But ever day by day against the sunset traced:

II

There moving through a poisonous cloud that stings With dust of alkali the trampling band Of Indian ponies, ride on dusky wings The red marauders of the Western land; Heavy with spoil, they seek the trail that brings Their flaunting lances to that sheltered bank Where lie their lodges; and the river sings Forgetful of the plain beyond, that drank Its life blood, where the wasted caravan sank.

III

They brought with them the thief's ignoble spoil, The beggar's dole, the greed of chiffonnier, The scum of camps, the implements of toil Snatched from dead hands, to rust as useless here; All they could rake or glean from hut or soil Piled their lean ponies, with the jackdaw's greed For vacant glitter. It were scarce a foil To all this tinsel that one feathered reed Bore on its barb two scalps that freshly bleed!

IV

They brought with them, alas! a wounded foe, Bound hand and foot, yet nursed with cruel care, Lest that in death he might escape one throe They had decreed his living flesh should bear: A youthful officer, by one foul blow Of treachery surprised, yet fighting still Amid his ambushed train, calm as the snow Above him; hopeless, yet content to spill His blood with theirs, and fighting but to kill.

V

He had fought nobly, and in that brief spell Had won the awe of those rude border men Who gathered round him, and beside him fell In loyal faith and silence, save that when By smoke embarrassed, and near sight as well, He paused to wipe his eyeglass, and decide Its nearer focus, there arose a yell Of approbation, and Bob Barker cried, "Wade in, Dundreary!" tossed his cap and--died.

VI

Their sole survivor now! his captors bear Him all unconscious, and beside the stream Leave him to rest; meantime the squaws prepare The stake for sacrifice: nor wakes a gleam Of pity in those Furies' eyes that glare Expectant of the torture; yet alway His steadfast spirit shines and mocks them there With peace they know not, till at close of day On his dull ear there thrills a whispered "Grey!"

VII

He starts! Was it a trick? Had angels kind Touched with compassion some weak woman's breast? Such things he'd read of! Faintly to his mind Came Pocahontas pleading for her guest. But then, this voice, though soft, was still inclined To baritone! A squaw in ragged gown Stood near him, frowning hatred. Was he blind? Whose eye was this beneath that beetling frown? The frown was painted, but that wink meant--Brown!

VIII

"Hush! for your life and mine! the thongs are cut," He whispers; "in yon thicket stands my horse. One dash!--I follow close, as if to glut My own revenge, yet bar the others' course. Now!" And 'tis done. Grey speeds, Brown follows; but Ere yet they reach the shade, Grey, fainting, reels, Yet not before Brown's circling arms close shut His in, uplifting him! Anon he feels A horse beneath him bound, and hears the rattling heels.

IX

Then rose a yell of baffled hate, and sprang Headlong the savages in swift pursuit; Though speed the fugitives, they hope to hang Hot on their heels, like wolves, with tireless foot. Long is the chase; Brown hears with inward pang The short, hard panting of his gallant steed Beneath its double burden; vainly rang Both voice and spur. The heaving flanks may bleed, Yet comes the sequel that they still must heed!

X

Brown saw it--reined his steed; dismounting, stood Calm and inflexible. "Old chap! you see There is but ONE escape. You know it? Good! There is ONE man to take it. You are he. The horse won't carry double. If he could, 'Twould but protract this bother. I shall stay: I've business with these devils, they with me; I will occupy them till you get away. Hush! quick time, forward. There! God bless you, Grey!"

XI

But as he finished, Grey slipped to his feet, Calm as his ancestors in voice and eye: "You do forget yourself when you compete With him whose RIGHT it is to stay and die: That's not YOUR duty. Please regain your seat; And take my ORDERS--since I rank you here!-- Mount and rejoin your men, and my defeat Report at quarters. Take this letter; ne'er Give it to aught but HER, nor let aught interfere."

XII

And, shamed and blushing, Brown the letter took Obediently and placed it in his pocket; Then, drawing forth another, said, "I look For death as you do, wherefore take this locket And letter." Here his comrade's hand he shook In silence. "Should we both together fall, Some other man"--but here all speech forsook His lips, as ringing cheerily o'er all He heard afar his own dear bugle-call!

XIII

'Twas his command and succor, but e'en then Grey fainted, with poor Brown, who had forgot He likewise had been wounded, and both men Were picked up quite unconscious of their lot. Long lay they in extremity, and when They both grew stronger, and once more exchanged Old vows and memories, one common "den" In hospital was theirs, and free they ranged, Awaiting orders, but no more estranged.

XIV

And yet 'twas strange--nor can I end my tale Without this moral, to be fair and just: They never sought to know why each did fail The prompt fulfillment of the other's trust. It was suggested they could not avail Themselves of either letter, since they were Duly dispatched to their address by mail By Captain X., who knew Miss Rover fair Now meant stout Mistress Bloggs of Blank Blank Square.

II. SPANISH IDYLS AND LEGENDS

THE MIRACLE OF PADRE JUNIPERO

This is the tale that the Chronicle Tells of the wonderful miracle Wrought by the pious Padre Serro, The very reverend Junipero.

The heathen stood on his ancient mound, Looking over the desert bound Into the distant, hazy South, Over the dusty and broad champaign, Where, with many a gaping mouth And fissure, cracked by the fervid drouth, For seven months had the wasted plain Known no moisture of dew or rain. The wells were empty and choked with sand; The rivers had perished from the land; Only the sea-fogs to and fro Slipped like ghosts of the streams below. Deep in its bed lay the river's bones, Bleaching in pebbles and milk-white stones, And tracked o'er the desert faint and far, Its ribs shone bright on each sandy bar.

Thus they stood as the sun went down Over the foot-hills bare and brown; Thus they looked to the South, wherefrom The pale-face medicine-man should come, Not in anger or in strife, But to bring--so ran the tale-- The welcome springs of eternal life, The living waters that should not fail.

Said one, "He will come like Manitou, Unseen, unheard, in the falling dew." Said another, "He will come full soon Out of the round-faced watery moon." And another said, "He is here!" and lo, Faltering, staggering, feeble and slow, Out from the desert's blinding heat The Padre dropped at the heathen's feet.

They stood and gazed for a little space Down on his pallid and careworn face, And a smile of scorn went round the band As they touched alternate with foot and hand This mortal waif, that the outer space Of dim mysterious sky and sand Flung with so little of Christian grace Down on their barren, sterile strand.

Said one to him: "It seems thy God Is a very pitiful kind of God: He could not shield thine aching eyes From the blowing desert sands that rise, Nor turn aside from thy old gray head The glittering blade that is brandished By the sun He set in the heavens high; He could not moisten thy lips when dry; The desert fire is in thy brain; Thy limbs are racked with the fever-pain. If this be the grace He showeth thee Who art His servant, what may we, Strange to His ways and His commands, Seek at His unforgiving hands?"

"Drink but this cup," said the Padre, straight, "And thou shalt know whose mercy bore These aching limbs to your heathen door, And purged my soul of its gross estate. Drink in His name, and thou shalt see The hidden depths of this mystery. Drink!" and he held the cup. One blow From the heathen dashed to the ground below The sacred cup that the Padre bore, And the thirsty soil drank the precious store Of sacramental and holy wine, That emblem and consecrated sign And blessed symbol of blood divine.

Then, says the legend (and they who doubt The same as heretics be accurst), From the dry and feverish soil leaped out A living fountain; a well-spring burst Over the dusty and broad champaign, Over the sandy and sterile plain, Till the granite ribs and the milk-white stones That lay in the valley--the scattered bones-- Moved in the river and lived again!

Such was the wonderful miracle Wrought by the cup of wine that fell From the hands of the pious Padre Serro, The very reverend Junipero.

THE WONDERFUL SPRING OF SAN JOAQUIN

Of all the fountains that poets sing,-- Crystal, thermal, or mineral spring, Ponce de Leon's Fount of Youth, Wells with bottoms of doubtful truth,-- In short, of all the springs of Time That ever were flowing in fact or rhyme, That ever were tasted, felt, or seen, There were none like the Spring of San Joaquin.

Anno Domini eighteen-seven, Father Dominguez (now in heaven,-- Obiit eighteen twenty-seven) Found the spring, and found it, too, By his mule's miraculous cast of a shoe; For his beast--a descendant of Balaam's ass-- Stopped on the instant, and would not pass.

The Padre thought the omen good, And bent his lips to the trickling flood; Then--as the Chronicles declare, On the honest faith of a true believer-- His cheeks, though wasted, lank, and bare, Filled like a withered russet pear In the vacuum of a glass receiver, And the snows that seventy winters bring Melted away in that magic spring.

Such, at least, was the wondrous news The Padre brought into Santa Cruz. The Church, of course, had its own views Of who were worthiest to use The magic spring; but the prior claim Fell to the aged, sick, and lame. Far and wide the people came: Some from the healthful Aptos Creek Hastened to bring their helpless sick; Even the fishers of rude Soquel Suddenly found they were far from well; The brawny dwellers of San Lorenzo Said, in fact, they had never been so; And all were ailing,--strange to say,-- From Pescadero to Monterey.

Over the mountain they poured in, With leathern bottles and bags of skin; Through the canyons a motley throng Trotted, hobbled, and limped along. The Fathers gazed at the moving scene With pious joy and with souls serene; And then--a result perhaps foreseen-- They laid out the Mission of San Joaquin.

Not in the eyes of faith alone The good effects of the water shone; But skins grew rosy, eyes waxed clear, Of rough vaquero and muleteer; Angular forms were rounded out, Limbs grew supple and waists grew stout; And as for the girls,--for miles about They had no equal! To this day, From Pescadero to Monterey, You'll still find eyes in which are seen The liquid graces of San Joaquin.

There is a limit to human bliss, And the Mission of San Joaquin had this; None went abroad to roam or stay But they fell sick in the queerest way,-- A singular maladie du pays, With gastric symptoms: so they spent Their days in a sensuous content, Caring little for things unseen Beyond their bowers of living green, Beyond the mountains that lay between The world and the Mission of San Joaquin.

Winter passed, and the summer came The trunks of madrono, all aflame, Here and there through the underwood Like pillars of fire starkly stood. All of the breezy solitude Was filled with the spicing of pine and bay And resinous odors mixed and blended; And dim and ghostlike, far away, The smoke of the burning woods ascended. Then of a sudden the mountains swam, The rivers piled their floods in a dam, The ridge above Los Gatos Creek Arched its spine in a feline fashion; The forests waltzed till they grew sick, And Nature shook in a speechless passion; And, swallowed up in the earthquake's spleen, The wonderful Spring of San Joaquin Vanished, and never more was seen!

Two days passed: the Mission folk Out of their rosy dream awoke; Some of them looked a trifle white, But that, no doubt, was from earthquake fright. Three days: there was sore distress, Headache, nausea, giddiness. Four days: faintings, tenderness Of the mouth and fauces; and in less Than one week--here the story closes; We won't continue the prognosis-- Enough that now no trace is seen Of Spring or Mission of San Joaquin.

MORAL

You see the point? Don't be too quick To break bad habits: better stick, Like the Mission folk, to your ARSENIC.

THE ANGELUS

(HEARD AT THE MISSION DOLORES, 1868)

Bells of the Past, whose long-forgotten music Still fills the wide expanse, Tingeing the sober twilight of the Present With color of romance!

I hear your call, and see the sun descending On rock and wave and sand, As down the coast the Mission voices, blending, Girdle the heathen land.

Within the circle of your incantation No blight nor mildew falls; Nor fierce unrest, nor lust, nor low ambition Passes those airy walls.

Borne on the swell of your long waves receding, I touch the farther Past; I see the dying glow of Spanish glory, The sunset dream and last!

Before me rise the dome-shaped Mission towers, The white Presidio; The swart commander in his leathern jerkin, The priest in stole of snow.

Once more I see Portala's cross uplifting Above the setting sun; And past the headland, northward, slowly drifting, The freighted galleon.

O solemn bells! whose consecrated masses Recall the faith of old; O tinkling bells! that lulled with twilight music The spiritual fold!

Your voices break and falter in the darkness,-- Break, falter, and are still; And veiled and mystic, like the Host descending, The sun sinks from the hill!

CONCEPCION DE ARGUELLO

(PRESIDIO DE SAN FRANCISCO, 1800)

I

Looking seaward, o'er the sand-hills stands the fortress, old and quaint, By the San Francisco friars lifted to their patron saint,--

Sponsor to that wondrous city, now apostate to the creed, On whose youthful walls the Padre saw the angel's golden reed;

All its trophies long since scattered, all its blazon brushed away; And the flag that flies above it but a triumph of to-day.

Never scar of siege or battle challenges the wandering eye, Never breach of warlike onset holds the curious passer-by;

Only one sweet human fancy interweaves its threads of gold With the plain and homespun present, and a love that ne'er grows old;

Only one thing holds its crumbling walls above the meaner dust,-- Listen to the simple story of a woman's love and trust.

II

Count von Resanoff, the Russian, envoy of the mighty Czar, Stood beside the deep embrasures, where the brazen cannon are.

He with grave provincial magnates long had held serene debate On the Treaty of Alliance and the high affairs of state;

He from grave provincial magnates oft had turned to talk apart With the Commandante's daughter on the questions of the heart,

Until points of gravest import yielded slowly one by one, And by Love was consummated what Diplomacy begun;

Till beside the deep embrasures, where the brazen cannon are, He received the twofold contract for approval of the Czar;

Till beside the brazen cannon the betrothed bade adieu, And from sallyport and gateway north the Russian eagles flew.

III

Long beside the deep embrasures, where the brazen cannon are, Did they wait the promised bridegroom and the answer of the Czar;

Day by day on wall and bastion beat the hollow, empty breeze,-- Day by day the sunlight glittered on the vacant, smiling seas:

Week by week the near hills whitened in their dusty leather cloaks,-- Week by week the far hills darkened from the fringing plain of oaks;

Till the rains came, and far breaking, on the fierce southwester tost, Dashed the whole long coast with color, and then vanished and were lost.

So each year the seasons shifted,--wet and warm and drear and dry Half a year of clouds and flowers, half a year of dust and sky.

Still it brought no ship nor message,--brought no tidings, ill or meet, For the statesmanlike Commander, for the daughter fair and sweet.

Yet she heard the varying message, voiceless to all ears beside: "He will come," the flowers whispered; "Come no more," the dry hills sighed.

Still she found him with the waters lifted by the morning breeze,-- Still she lost him with the folding of the great white-tented seas;

Until hollows chased the dimples from her cheeks of olive brown, And at times a swift, shy moisture dragged the long sweet lashes down;

Or the small mouth curved and quivered as for some denied caress, And the fair young brow was knitted in an infantine distress.

Then the grim Commander, pacing where the brazen cannon are, Comforted the maid with proverbs, wisdom gathered from afar;

Bits of ancient observation by his fathers garnered, each As a pebble worn and polished in the current of his speech:

"'Those who wait the coming rider travel twice as far as he;' 'Tired wench and coming butter never did in time agree;'

"'He that getteth himself honey, though a clown, he shall have flies;' 'In the end God grinds the miller;' 'In the dark the mole has eyes;'

"'He whose father is Alcalde of his trial hath no fear,'-- And be sure the Count has reasons that will make his conduct clear."

Then the voice sententious faltered, and the wisdom it would teach Lost itself in fondest trifles of his soft Castilian speech;

And on "Concha" "Conchitita," and "Conchita" he would dwell With the fond reiteration which the Spaniard knows so well.

So with proverbs and caresses, half in faith and half in doubt, Every day some hope was kindled, flickered, faded, and went out.

IV

Yearly, down the hillside sweeping, came the stately cavalcade, Bringing revel to vaquero, joy and comfort to each maid;

Bringing days of formal visit, social feast and rustic sport, Of bull-baiting on the plaza, of love-making in the court.

Vainly then at Concha's lattice, vainly as the idle wind, Rose the thin high Spanish tenor that bespoke the youth too kind;

Vainly, leaning from their saddles, caballeros, bold and fleet, Plucked for her the buried chicken from beneath their mustang's feet;

So in vain the barren hillsides with their gay serapes blazed,-- Blazed and vanished in the dust-cloud that their flying hoofs had raised.

Then the drum called from the rampart, and once more, with patient mien, The Commander and his daughter each took up the dull routine,--

Each took up the petty duties of a life apart and lone, Till the slow years wrought a music in its dreary monotone.

V

Forty years on wall and bastion swept the hollow idle breeze, Since the Russian eagle fluttered from the California seas;

Forty years on wall and bastion wrought its slow but sure decay, And St. George's cross was lifted in the port of Monterey;

And the citadel was lighted, and the hall was gayly drest, All to honor Sir George Simpson, famous traveler and guest.

Far and near the people gathered to the costly banquet set, And exchanged congratulations with the English baronet;

Till, the formal speeches ended, and amidst the laugh and wine, Some one spoke of Concha's lover,--heedless of the warning sign.

Quickly then cried Sir George Simpson: "Speak no ill of him, I pray! He is dead. He died, poor fellow, forty years ago this day,--

"Died while speeding home to Russia, falling from a fractious horse. Left a sweetheart, too, they tell me. Married, I suppose, of course!

"Lives she yet?" A deathlike silence fell on banquet, guests, and hall, And a trembling figure rising fixed the awestruck gaze of all.

Two black eyes in darkened orbits gleamed beneath the nun's white hood; Black serge hid the wasted figure, bowed and stricken where it stood.

"Lives she yet?" Sir George repeated. All were hushed as Concha drew Closer yet her nun's attire. "Senor, pardon, she died, too!"

"FOR THE KING"

(NORTHERN MEXICO, 1640)

As you look from the plaza at Leon west You can see her house, but the view is best From the porch of the church where she lies at rest;

Where much of her past still lives, I think, In the scowling brows and sidelong blink Of the worshiping throng that rise or sink

To the waxen saints that, yellow and lank, Lean out from their niches, rank on rank, With a bloodless Saviour on either flank;

In the gouty pillars, whose cracks begin To show the adobe core within,-- A soul of earth in a whitewashed skin.

And I think that the moral of all, you'll say, Is the sculptured legend that moulds away On a tomb in the choir: "Por el Rey."

"Por el Rey!" Well, the king is gone Ages ago, and the Hapsburg one Shot--but the Rock of the Church lives on.

"Por el Rey!" What matters, indeed, If king or president succeed To a country haggard with sloth and greed,

As long as one granary is fat, And yonder priest, in a shovel hat, Peeps out from the bin like a sleek brown rat?

What matters? Naught, if it serves to bring The legend nearer,--no other thing,-- We'll spare the moral, "Live the king!"

Two hundred years ago, they say, The Viceroy, Marquis of Monte-Rey, Rode with his retinue that way:

Grave, as befitted Spain's grandee; Grave, as the substitute should be Of His Most Catholic Majesty;

Yet, from his black plume's curving grace To his slim black gauntlet's smaller space, Exquisite as a piece of lace!

Two hundred years ago--e'en so-- The Marquis stopped where the lime-trees blow, While Leon's seneschal bent him low,

And begged that the Marquis would that night take His humble roof for the royal sake, And then, as the custom demanded, spake

The usual wish, that his guest would hold The house, and all that it might enfold, As his--with the bride scarce three days old.

Be sure that the Marquis, in his place, Replied to all with the measured grace Of chosen speech and unmoved face;

Nor raised his head till his black plume swept The hem of the lady's robe, who kept Her place, as her husband backward stept.

And then (I know not how nor why) A subtle flame in the lady's eye-- Unseen by the courtiers standing by--

Burned through his lace and titled wreath, Burned through his body's jeweled sheath, Till it touched the steel of the man beneath!

(And yet, mayhap, no more was meant Than to point a well-worn compliment, And the lady's beauty, her worst intent.)

Howbeit, the Marquis bowed again: "Who rules with awe well serveth Spain, But best whose law is love made plain."

Be sure that night no pillow prest The seneschal, but with the rest Watched, as was due a royal guest,--

Watched from the wall till he saw the square Fill with the moonlight, white and bare,-- Watched till he saw two shadows fare

Out from his garden, where the shade That the old church tower and belfry made Like a benedictory hand was laid.

Few words spoke the seneschal as he turned To his nearest sentry: "These monks have learned That stolen fruit is sweetly earned.

"Myself shall punish yon acolyte Who gathers my garden grapes by night; Meanwhile, wait thou till the morning light."

Yet not till the sun was riding high Did the sentry meet his commander's eye, Nor then till the Viceroy stood by.

To the lovers of grave formalities No greeting was ever so fine, I wis, As this host's and guest's high courtesies!

The seneschal feared, as the wind was west, A blast from Morena had chilled his rest; The Viceroy languidly confest

That cares of state, and--he dared to say-- Some fears that the King could not repay The thoughtful zeal of his host, some way

Had marred his rest. Yet he trusted much None shared his wakefulness; though such Indeed might be! If he dared to touch

A theme so fine--the bride, perchance, Still slept! At least, they missed her glance To give this greeting countenance.

Be sure that the seneschal, in turn, Was deeply bowed with the grave concern Of the painful news his guest should learn:

"Last night, to her father's dying bed By a priest was the lady summoned; Nor know we yet how well she sped,

"But hope for the best." The grave Viceroy (Though grieved his visit had such alloy) Must still wish the seneschal great joy

Of a bride so true to her filial trust! Yet now, as the day waxed on, they must To horse, if they'd 'scape the noonday dust.

"Nay," said the seneschal, "at least, To mend the news of this funeral priest, Myself shall ride as your escort east."

The Viceroy bowed. Then turned aside To his nearest follower: "With me ride-- You and Felipe--on either side.

"And list! Should anything me befall, Mischance of ambush or musket-ball, Cleave to his saddle yon seneschal!

"No more." Then gravely in accents clear Took formal leave of his late good cheer; Whiles the seneschal whispered a musketeer,

Carelessly stroking his pommel top: "If from the saddle ye see me drop, Riddle me quickly yon solemn fop!"

So these, with many a compliment, Each on his own dark thought intent, With grave politeness onward went,

Riding high, and in sight of all, Viceroy, escort, and seneschal, Under the shade of the Almandral;

Holding their secret hard and fast, Silent and grave they ride at last Into the dusty traveled Past.

Even like this they passed away Two hundred years ago to-day. What of the lady? Who shall say?

Do the souls of the dying ever yearn To some favored spot for the dust's return, For the homely peace of the family urn?

I know not. Yet did the seneschal, Chancing in after-years to fall Pierced by a Flemish musket-ball,

Call to his side a trusty friar, And bid him swear, as his last desire, To bear his corse to San Pedro's choir

At Leon, where 'neath a shield azure Should his mortal frame find sepulture: This much, for the pains Christ did endure.

Be sure that the friar loyally Fulfilled his trust by land and sea, Till the spires of Leon silently

Rose through the green of the Almandral, As if to beckon the seneschal To his kindred dust 'neath the choir wall.

I wot that the saints on either side Leaned from their niches open-eyed To see the doors of the church swing wide;

That the wounds of the Saviour on either flank Bled fresh, as the mourners, rank by rank, Went by with the coffin, clank on clank.

For why? When they raised the marble door Of the tomb, untouched for years before, The friar swooned on the choir floor;

For there, in her laces and festal dress, Lay the dead man's wife, her loveliness Scarcely changed by her long duress,--

As on the night she had passed away; Only that near her a dagger lay, With the written legend, "Por el Rey."

What was their greeting, the groom and bride, They whom that steel and the years divide? I know not. Here they lie side by side.

Side by side! Though the king has his way, Even the dead at last have their day. Make you the moral. "Por el Rey!"

RAMON

(REFUGIO MINE, NORTHERN MEXICO)

Drunk and senseless in his place, Prone and sprawling on his face, More like brute than any man Alive or dead, By his great pump out of gear, Lay the peon engineer, Waking only just to hear, Overhead, Angry tones that called his name, Oaths and cries of bitter blame,-- Woke to hear all this, and, waking, turned and fled!

"To the man who'll bring to me," Cried Intendant Harry Lee,-- Harry Lee, the English foreman of the mine,-- "Bring the sot alive or dead, I will give to him," he said, "Fifteen hundred pesos down, Just to set the rascal's crown Underneath this heel of mine: Since but death Deserves the man whose deed, Be it vice or want of heed, Stops the pumps that give us breath,-- Stops the pumps that suck the death From the poisoned lower levels of the mine!"

No one answered; for a cry From the shaft rose up on high, And shuffling, scrambling, tumbling from below, Came the miners each, the bolder Mounting on the weaker's shoulder, Grappling, clinging to their hold or Letting go, As the weaker gasped and fell From the ladder to the well,-- To the poisoned pit of hell Down below!

"To the man who sets them free," Cried the foreman, Harry Lee,-- Harry Lee, the English foreman of the mine,-- "Brings them out and sets them free, I will give that man," said he, "Twice that sum, who with a rope Face to face with Death shall cope. Let him come who dares to hope!" "Hold your peace!" some one replied, Standing by the foreman's side; "There has one already gone, whoe'er he be!"

Then they held their breath with awe, Pulling on the rope, and saw Fainting figures reappear, On the black rope swinging clear, Fastened by some skillful hand from below; Till a score the level gained, And but one alone remained,-- He the hero and the last, He whose skillful hand made fast The long line that brought them back to hope and cheer!

Haggard, gasping, down dropped he At the feet of Harry Lee,-- Harry Lee, the English foreman of the mine. "I have come," he gasped, "to claim Both rewards. Senor, my name Is Ramon! I'm the drunken engineer, I'm the coward, Senor"-- Here He fell over, by that sign, Dead as stone!

DON DIEGO OF THE SOUTH

(REFECTORY, MISSION SAN GABRIEL, 1869)

Good!--said the Padre,--believe me still, "Don Giovanni," or what you will, The type's eternal! We knew him here As Don Diego del Sud. I fear The story's no new one! Will you hear?

One of those spirits you can't tell why God has permitted. Therein I Have the advantage, for I hold That wolves are sent to the purest fold, And we'd save the wolf if we'd get the lamb. You're no believer? Good! I am.

Well, for some purpose, I grant you dim, The Don loved women, and they loved him. Each thought herself his LAST love! Worst, Many believed that they were his FIRST! And, such are these creatures since the Fall, The very doubt had a charm for all!

You laugh! You are young, but I--indeed I have no patience... To proceed:-- You saw, as you passed through the upper town, The Eucinal where the road goes down To San Felipe! There one morn They found Diego,--his mantle torn, And as many holes through his doublet's band As there were wronged husbands--you understand!

"Dying," so said the gossips. "Dead" Was what the friars who found him said. May be. Quien sabe? Who else should know? It was a hundred years ago. There was a funeral. Small indeed-- Private. What would you? To proceed:--

Scarcely the year had flown. One night The Commandante awoke in fright, Hearing below his casement's bar The well-known twang of the Don's guitar; And rushed to the window, just to see His wife a-swoon on the balcony.

One week later, Don Juan Ramirez Found his own daughter, the Dona Inez, Pale as a ghost, leaning out to hear The song of that phantom cavalier. Even Alcalde Pedro Blas Saw, it was said, through his niece's glass, The shade of Diego twice repass.

What these gentlemen each confessed Heaven and the Church only knows. At best The case was a bad one. How to deal With Sin as a Ghost, they couldn't but feel Was an awful thing. Till a certain Fray Humbly offered to show the way.

And the way was this. Did I say before That the Fray was a stranger? No, Senor? Strange! very strange! I should have said That the very week that the Don lay dead He came among us. Bread he broke Silent, nor ever to one he spoke. So he had vowed it! Below his brows His face was hidden. There are such vows!

Strange! are they not? You do not use Snuff? A bad habit!

Well, the views Of the Fray were these: that the penance done By the caballeros was right; but one Was due from the CAUSE, and that, in brief, Was Dona Dolores Gomez, chief, And Inez, Sanchicha, Concepcion, And Carmen,--well, half the girls in town On his tablets the Friar had written down.

These were to come on a certain day And ask at the hands of the pious Fray For absolution. That done, small fear But the shade of Diego would disappear.

They came; each knelt in her turn and place To the pious Fray with his hidden face And voiceless lips, and each again Took back her soul freed from spot or stain, Till the Dona Inez, with eyes downcast And a tear on their fringes, knelt her last.

And then--perhaps that her voice was low From fear or from shame--the monks said so-- But the Fray leaned forward, when, presto! all Were thrilled by a scream, and saw her fall Fainting beside the confessional.

And so was the ghost of Diego laid As the Fray had said. Never more his shade Was seen at San Gabriel's Mission. Eh! The girl interests you? I dare say! "Nothing," said she, when they brought her to-- "Only a faintness!" They spoke more true Who said 'twas a stubborn soul. But then-- Women are women, and men are men!

So, to return. As I said before, Having got the wolf, by the same high law We saved the lamb in the wolf's own jaw, And that's my moral. The tale, I fear, But poorly told. Yet it strikes me here Is stuff for a moral. What's your view? You smile, Don Pancho. Ah! that's like you!

AT THE HACIENDA

Know I not whom thou mayst be Carved upon this olive-tree,-- "Manuela of La Torre,"-- For around on broken walls Summer sun and spring rain falls, And in vain the low wind calls "Manuela of La Torre."

Of that song no words remain But the musical refrain,-- "Manuela of La Torre." Yet at night, when winds are still, Tinkles on the distant hill A guitar, and words that thrill Tell to me the old, old story,-- Old when first thy charms were sung, Old when these old walls were young, "Manuela of La Torre."

FRIAR PEDRO'S RIDE

It was the morning season of the year; It was the morning era of the land; The watercourses rang full loud and clear; Portala's cross stood where Portala's hand Had planted it when Faith was taught by Fear, When monks and missions held the sole command Of all that shore beside the peaceful sea, Where spring-tides beat their long-drawn reveille.

Out of the mission of San Luis Rey, All in that brisk, tumultuous spring weather, Rode Friar Pedro, in a pious way, With six dragoons in cuirasses of leather, Each armed alike for either prayer or fray; Handcuffs and missals they had slung together, And as an aid the gospel truth to scatter Each swung a lasso--alias a "riata."

In sooth, that year the harvest had been slack, The crop of converts scarce worth computation; Some souls were lost, whose owners had turned back To save their bodies frequent flagellation; And some preferred the songs of birds, alack! To Latin matins and their souls' salvation, And thought their own wild whoopings were less dreary Than Father Pedro's droning miserere.

To bring them back to matins and to prime, To pious works and secular submission, To prove to them that liberty was crime,-- This was, in fact, the Padre's present mission; To get new souls perchance at the same time, And bring them to a "sense of their condition,"-- That easy phrase, which, in the past and present, Means making that condition most unpleasant.

He saw the glebe land guiltless of a furrow; He saw the wild oats wrestle on the hill; He saw the gopher working in his burrow; He saw the squirrel scampering at his will:-- He saw all this, and felt no doubt a thorough And deep conviction of God's goodness; still He failed to see that in His glory He Yet left the humblest of His creatures free.

He saw the flapping crow, whose frequent note Voiced the monotony of land and sky, Mocking with graceless wing and rusty coat His priestly presence as he trotted by. He would have cursed the bird by bell and rote, But other game just then was in his eye,-- A savage camp, whose occupants preferred Their heathen darkness to the living Word.

He rang his bell, and at the martial sound Twelve silver spurs their jingling rowels clashed; Six horses sprang across the level ground As six dragoons in open order dashed; Above their heads the lassos circled round, In every eye a pious fervor flashed; They charged the camp, and in one moment more They lassoed six and reconverted four.

The Friar saw the conflict from a knoll, And sang Laus Deo and cheered on his men: "Well thrown, Bautista,--that's another soul; After him, Gomez,--try it once again; This way, Felipe,--there the heathen stole; Bones of St. Francis!--surely that makes TEN; Te Deum laudamus--but they're very wild; Non nobis Domine--all right, my child!"

When at that moment--as the story goes-- A certain squaw, who had her foes eluded, Ran past the Friar, just before his nose. He stared a moment, and in silence brooded; Then in his breast a pious frenzy rose And every other prudent thought excluded; He caught a lasso, and dashed in a canter After that Occidental Atalanta.

High o'er his head he swirled the dreadful noose; But, as the practice was quite unfamiliar, His first cast tore Felipe's captive loose, And almost choked Tiburcio Camilla, And might have interfered with that brave youth's Ability to gorge the tough tortilla; But all things come by practice, and at last His flying slip-knot caught the maiden fast.

Then rose above the plain a mingled yell Of rage and triumph,--a demoniac whoop: The Padre heard it like a passing knell, And would have loosened his unchristian loop; But the tough raw-hide held the captive well, And held, alas! too well the captor-dupe; For with one bound the savage fled amain, Dragging horse, Friar, down the lonely plain.

Down the arroyo, out across the mead, By heath and hollow, sped the flying maid, Dragging behind her still the panting steed And helpless Friar, who in vain essayed To cut the lasso or to check his speed. He felt himself beyond all human aid, And trusted to the saints,--and, for that matter, To some weak spot in Felipe's riata.

Alas! the lasso had been duly blessed, And, like baptism, held the flying wretch,-- A doctrine that the priest had oft expressed, Which, like the lasso, might be made to stretch, But would not break; so neither could divest Themselves of it, but, like some awful fetch, The holy Friar had to recognize The image of his fate in heathen guise.

He saw the glebe land guiltless of a furrow; He saw the wild oats wrestle on the hill; He saw the gopher standing in his burrow; He saw the squirrel scampering at his will:-- He saw all this, and felt no doubt how thorough The contrast was to his condition; still The squaw kept onward to the sea, till night And the cold sea-fog hid them both from sight.

The morning came above the serried coast, Lighting the snow-peaks with its beacon-fires, Driving before it all the fleet-winged host Of chattering birds above the Mission spires, Filling the land with light and joy, but most The savage woods with all their leafy lyres; In pearly tints and opal flame and fire The morning came, but not the holy Friar.

Weeks passed away. In vain the Fathers sought Some trace or token that might tell his story; Some thought him dead, or, like Elijah, caught Up to the heavens in a blaze of glory. In this surmise some miracles were wrought On his account, and souls in purgatory Were thought to profit from his intercession; In brief, his absence made a "deep impression."

A twelvemonth passed; the welcome Spring once more Made green the hills beside the white-faced Mission, Spread her bright dais by the western shore, And sat enthroned, a most resplendent vision. The heathen converts thronged the chapel door At morning mass, when, says the old tradition, A frightful whoop throughout the church resounded, And to their feet the congregation bounded.

A tramp of hoofs upon the beaten course, Then came a sight that made the bravest quail: A phantom Friar on a spectre horse, Dragged by a creature decked with horns and tail. By the lone Mission, with the whirlwind's force, They madly swept, and left a sulphurous trail: And that was all,--enough to tell the story, And leave unblessed those souls in purgatory.

And ever after, on that fatal day That Friar Pedro rode abroad lassoing, A ghostly couple came and went away With savage whoop and heathenish hallooing, Which brought discredit on San Luis Rey, And proved the Mission's ruin and undoing; For ere ten years had passed, the squaw and Friar Performed to empty walls and fallen spire.

The Mission is no more; upon its wall. The golden lizards slip, or breathless pause, Still as the sunshine brokenly that falls Through crannied roof and spider-webs of gauze; No more the bell its solemn warning calls,-- A holier silence thrills and overawes; And the sharp lights and shadows of to-day Outline the Mission of San Luis Rey.

IN THE MISSION GARDEN

(1865)

FATHER FELIPE

I speak not the English well, but Pachita, She speak for me; is it not so, my Pancha? Eh, little rogue? Come, salute me the stranger Americano.

Sir, in my country we say, "Where the heart is, There live the speech." Ah! you not understand? So! Pardon an old man,--what you call "old fogy,"-- Padre Felipe!

Old, Senor, old! just so old as the Mission. You see that pear-tree? How old you think, Senor? Fifteen year? Twenty? Ah, Senor, just fifty Gone since I plant him!

You like the wine? It is some at the Mission, Made from the grape of the year eighteen hundred; All the same time when the earthquake he come to San Juan Bautista.

But Pancha is twelve, and she is the rose-tree; And I am the olive, and this is the garden: And "Pancha" we say, but her name is "Francisca," Same like her mother.

Eh, you knew HER? No? Ah! it is a story; But I speak not, like Pachita, the English: So! if I try, you will sit here beside me, And shall not laugh, eh?

When the American come to the Mission, Many arrive at the house of Francisca: One,--he was fine man,--he buy the cattle Of Jose Castro.

So! he came much, and Francisca, she saw him: And it was love,--and a very dry season; And the pears bake on the tree,--and the rain come, But not Francisca.

Not for one year; and one night I have walk much Under the olive-tree, when comes Francisca,-- Comes to me here, with her child, this Francisca,-- Under the olive-tree.

Sir, it was sad;... but I speak not the English; So!... she stay here, and she wait for her husband: He come no more, and she sleep on the hillside; There stands Pachita.

Ah! there's the Angelus. Will you not enter? Or shall you walk in the garden with Pancha? Go, little rogue--st! attend to the stranger! Adios, Senor.

PACHITA (briskly).

So, he's been telling that yarn about mother! Bless you! he tells it to every stranger: Folks about yer say the old man's my father; What's your opinion?

THE LOST GALLEON*

In sixteen hundred and forty-one, The regular yearly galleon, Laden with odorous gums and spice, India cottons and India rice, And the richest silks of far Cathay, Was due at Acapulco Bay.

Due she was, and overdue,-- Galleon, merchandise and crew, Creeping along through rain and shine, Through the tropics, under the line. The trains were waiting outside the walls, The wives of sailors thronged the town, The traders sat by their empty stalls, And the Viceroy himself came down; The bells in the tower were all a-trip, Te Deums were on each Father's lip, The limes were ripening in the sun For the sick of the coming galleon.

All in vain. Weeks passed away, And yet no galleon saw the bay. India goods advanced in price; The Governor missed his favorite spice; The Senoritas mourned for sandal And the famous cottons of Coromandel; And some for an absent lover lost, And one for a husband,--Dona Julia, Wife of the captain tempest-tossed, In circumstances so peculiar; Even the Fathers, unawares, Grumbled a little at their prayers; And all along the coast that year Votive candles wore scarce and dear.

Never a tear bedims the eye That time and patience will not dry; Never a lip is curved with pain That can't be kissed into smiles again; And these same truths, as far as I know, Obtained on the coast of Mexico More than two hundred years ago, In sixteen hundred and fifty-one,-- Ten years after the deed was done,-- And folks had forgotten the galleon: The divers plunged in the gulf for pearls, White as the teeth of the Indian girls; The traders sat by their full bazaars; The mules with many a weary load, And oxen dragging their creaking cars, Came and went on the mountain road.

Where was the galleon all this while? Wrecked on some lonely coral isle, Burnt by the roving sea-marauders, Or sailing north under secret orders? Had she found the Anian passage famed, By lying Maldonado claimed, And sailed through the sixty-fifth degree Direct to the North Atlantic Sea? Or had she found the "River of Kings," Of which De Fonte told such strange things, In sixteen forty? Never a sign, East or west or under the line, They saw of the missing galleon; Never a sail or plank or chip They found of the long-lost treasure-ship, Or enough to build a tale upon. But when she was lost, and where and how, Are the facts we're coming to just now.

Take, if you please, the chart of that day, Published at Madrid,--por el Rey; Look for a spot in the old South Sea, The hundred and eightieth degree Longitude west of Madrid: there, Under the equatorial glare, Just where the east and west are one, You'll find the missing galleon,-- You'll find the San Gregorio, yet Riding the seas, with sails all set, Fresh as upon the very day She sailed from Acapulco Bay.

How did she get there? What strange spell Kept her two hundred years so well, Free from decay and mortal taint? What but the prayers of a patron saint!

A hundred leagues from Manilla town, The San Gregorio's helm came down; Round she went on her heel, and not A cable's length from a galliot That rocked on the waters just abreast Of the galleon's course, which was west-sou'-west.

Then said the galleon's commandante, General Pedro Sobriente (That was his rank on land and main, A regular custom of Old Spain), "My pilot is dead of scurvy: may I ask the longitude, time, and day?" The first two given and compared; The third--the commandante stared! "The FIRST of June? I make it second." Said the stranger, "Then you've wrongly reckoned; I make it FIRST: as you came this way, You should have lost, d'ye see, a day; Lost a day, as plainly see, On the hundred and eightieth degree." "Lost a day?" "Yes; if not rude, When did you make east longitude?" "On the ninth of May,--our patron's day." "On the ninth?--YOU HAD NO NINTH OF MAY! Eighth and tenth was there; but stay"-- Too late; for the galleon bore away.

Lost was the day they should have kept, Lost unheeded and lost unwept; Lost in a way that made search vain, Lost in a trackless and boundless main; Lost like the day of Job's awful curse, In his third chapter, third and fourth verse; Wrecked was their patron's only day,-- What would the holy Fathers say?

Said the Fray Antonio Estavan, The galleon's chaplain,--a learned man,-- "Nothing is lost that you can regain; And the way to look for a thing is plain, To go where you lost it, back again. Back with your galleon till you see The hundred and eightieth degree. Wait till the rolling year goes round, And there will the missing day be found; For you'll find, if computation's true, That sailing EAST will give to you Not only one ninth of May, but two,-- One for the good saint's present cheer, And one for the day we lost last year."

Back to the spot sailed the galleon; Where, for a twelvemonth, off and on The hundred and eightieth degree She rose and fell on a tropic sea. But lo! when it came to the ninth of May, All of a sudden becalmed she lay One degree from that fatal spot, Without the power to move a knot; And of course the moment she lost her way, Gone was her chance to save that day.

To cut a lengthening story short, She never saved it. Made the sport Of evil spirits and baffling wind, She was always before or just behind, One day too soon or one day too late, And the sun, meanwhile, would never wait. She had two Eighths, as she idly lay, Two Tenths, but never a NINTH of May; And there she rides through two hundred years Of dreary penance and anxious fears; Yet, through the grace of the saint she served, Captain and crew are still preserved.

By a computation that still holds good, Made by the Holy Brotherhood, The San Gregorio will cross that line In nineteen hundred and thirty-nine: Just three hundred years to a day From the time she lost the ninth of May. And the folk in Acapulco town, Over the waters looking down, Will see in the glow of the setting sun The sails of the missing galleon, And the royal standard of Philip Rey, The gleaming mast and glistening spar, As she nears the surf of the outer bar. A Te Deum sung on her crowded deck, An odor of spice along the shore, A crash, a cry from a shattered wreck,-- And the yearly galleon sails no more In or out of the olden bay; For the blessed patron has found his day.

-------

Such is the legend. Hear this truth: Over the trackless past, somewhere, Lie the lost days of our tropic youth, Only regained by faith and prayer, Only recalled by prayer and plaint: Each lost day has its patron saint!

* See notes at end.

III. IN DIALECT

"JIM"

Say there! P'r'aps Some on you chaps Might know Jim Wild? Well,--no offense: Thar ain't no sense In gittin' riled!

Jim was my chum Up on the Bar: That's why I come Down from up yar, Lookin' for Jim. Thank ye, sir! YOU Ain't of that crew,-- Blest if you are!

Money? Not much: That ain't my kind; I ain't no such. Rum? I don't mind, Seein' it's you.

Well, this yer Jim,-- Did you know him? Jes' 'bout your size; Same kind of eyes;-- Well, that is strange: Why, it's two year Since he came here, Sick, for a change.

Well, here's to us: Eh? The h--- you say! Dead? That little cuss?

What makes you star', You over thar? Can't a man drop 's glass in yer shop But you must r'ar? It wouldn't take D----d much to break You and your bar.

Dead! Poor--little--Jim! Why, thar was me, Jones, and Bob Lee, Harry and Ben,-- No-account men: Then to take HIM!

Well, thar-- Good-by-- No more, sir--I-- Eh? What's that you say? Why, dern it!--sho!-- No? Yes! By Joe! Sold!

Sold! Why, you limb, You ornery, Derned old Long-legged Jim.

CHIQUITA

Beautiful! Sir, you may say so. Thar isn't her match in the county; Is thar, old gal,--Chiquita, my darling, my beauty? Feel of that neck, sir,--thar's velvet! Whoa! steady,--ah, will you, you vixen! Whoa! I say. Jack, trot her out; let the gentleman look at her paces.

Morgan!--she ain't nothing else, and I've got the papers to prove it. Sired by Chippewa Chief, and twelve hundred dollars won't buy her. Briggs of Tuolumne owned her. Did you know Briggs of Tuolumne? Busted hisself in White Pine, and blew out his brains down in 'Frisco?

Hedn't no savey, hed Briggs. Thar, Jack! that'll do,--quit that foolin'! Nothin' to what she kin do, when she's got her work cut out before her. Hosses is hosses, you know, and likewise, too, jockeys is jockeys: And 'tain't ev'ry man as can ride as knows what a hoss has got in him.

Know the old ford on the Fork, that nearly got Flanigan's leaders? Nasty in daylight, you bet, and a mighty rough ford in low water! Well, it ain't six weeks ago that me and the Jedge and his nevey Struck for that ford in the night, in the rain, and the water all round us;

Up to our flanks in the gulch, and Rattlesnake Creek just a-bilin', Not a plank left in the dam, and nary a bridge on the river. I had the gray, and the Jedge had his roan, and his nevey, Chiquita; And after us trundled the rocks jest loosed from the top of the canyon.

Lickity, lickity, switch, we came to the ford, and Chiquita Buckled right down to her work, and, a fore I could yell to her rider, Took water jest at the ford, and there was the Jedge and me standing, And twelve hundred dollars of hoss-flesh afloat, and a-driftin' to thunder!

Would ye b'lieve it? That night, that hoss, that 'ar filly, Chiquita, Walked herself into her stall, and stood there, all quiet and dripping: Clean as a beaver or rat, with nary a buckle of harness, Just as she swam the Fork,--that hoss, that 'ar filly, Chiquita.

That's what I call a hoss! and-- What did you say?-- Oh, the nevey? Drownded, I reckon,--leastways, he never kem beck to deny it. Ye see the derned fool had no seat, ye couldn't have made him a rider; And then, ye know, boys will be boys, and hosses--well, hosses is hosses!

DOW'S FLAT

(1856)

Dow's Flat. That's its name; And I reckon that you Are a stranger? The same? Well, I thought it was true,-- For thar isn't a man on the river as can't spot the place at first view.

It was called after Dow,-- Which the same was an ass,-- And as to the how Thet the thing kem to pass,-- Jest tie up your hoss to that buckeye, and sit ye down here in the grass.

You see this 'yer Dow Hed the worst kind of luck; He slipped up somehow On each thing thet he struck. Why, ef he'd a straddled thet fence-rail, the derned thing'd get up and buck.

He mined on the bar Till he couldn't pay rates; He was smashed by a car When he tunneled with Bates; And right on the top of his trouble kem his wife and five kids from the States.

It was rough,--mighty rough; But the boys they stood by, And they brought him the stuff For a house, on the sly; And the old woman,--well, she did washing, and took on when no one was nigh.

But this 'yer luck of Dow's Was so powerful mean That the spring near his house Dried right up on the green; And he sunk forty feet down for water, but nary a drop to be seen.

Then the bar petered out, And the boys wouldn't stay; And the chills got about, And his wife fell away; But Dow in his well kept a peggin' in his usual ridikilous way.

One day,--it was June, And a year ago, jest-- This Dow kem at noon To his work like the rest, With a shovel and pick on his shoulder, and derringer hid in his breast.

He goes to the well, And he stands on the brink, And stops for a spell Jest to listen and think: For the sun in his eyes (jest like this, sir!), you see, kinder made the cuss blink.

His two ragged gals In the gulch were at play, And a gownd that was Sal's Kinder flapped on a bay: Not much for a man to be leavin', but his all,--as I've heer'd the folks say.

And--That's a peart hoss Thet you've got,--ain't it now? What might be her cost? Eh? Oh!--Well, then, Dow-- Let's see,--well, that forty-foot grave wasn't his, sir, that day, anyhow.

For a blow of his pick Sorter caved in the side, And he looked and turned sick, Then he trembled and cried. For you see the dern cuss had struck--"Water?"--Beg your parding, young man,--there you lied!

It was GOLD,--in the quartz, And it ran all alike; And I reckon five oughts Was the worth of that strike; And that house with the coopilow's his'n,--which the same isn't bad for a Pike.

Thet's why it's Dow's Flat; And the thing of it is That he kinder got that Through sheer contrairiness: For 'twas WATER the derned cuss was seekin', and his luck made him certain to miss.

Thet's so! Thar's your way, To the left of yon tree; But--a--look h'yur, say? Won't you come up to tea? No? Well, then the next time you're passin'; and ask after Dow,-- and thet's ME.

IN THE TUNNEL

Didn't know Flynn,-- Flynn of Virginia,-- Long as he's been 'yar? Look 'ee here, stranger, Whar HEV you been?

Here in this tunnel He was my pardner, That same Tom Flynn,-- Working together, In wind and weather, Day out and in.

Didn't know Flynn! Well, that IS queer; Why, it's a sin To think of Tom Flynn,-- Tom with his cheer, Tom without fear,-- Stranger, look 'yar!

Thar in the drift, Back to the wall, He held the timbers Ready to fall; Then in the darkness I heard him call: "Run for your life, Jake! Run for your wife's sake! Don't wait for me." And that was all Heard in the din, Heard of Tom Flynn,-- Flynn of Virginia.

That's all about Flynn of Virginia. That lets me out. Here in the damp,-- Out of the sun,-- That 'ar derned lamp Makes my eyes run. Well, there,--I'm done!

But, sir, when you'll Hear the next fool Asking of Flynn,-- Flynn of Virginia,-- Just you chip in, Say you knew Flynn; Say that you've been 'yar.

"CICELY"

(ALKALI STATION)

Cicely says you're a poet; maybe,--I ain't much on rhyme: I reckon you'd give me a hundred, and beat me every time. Poetry!--that's the way some chaps puts up an idee, But I takes mine "straight without sugar," and that's what's the matter with me.

Poetry!--just look round you,--alkali, rock, and sage; Sage-brush, rock, and alkali; ain't it a pretty page! Sun in the east at mornin', sun in the west at night, And the shadow of this 'yer station the on'y thing moves in sight.

Poetry!--Well now--Polly! Polly, run to your mam; Run right away, my pooty! By-by! Ain't she a lamb? Poetry!--that reminds me o' suthin' right in that suit: Jest shet that door thar, will yer?--for Cicely's ears is cute.

Ye noticed Polly,--the baby? A month afore she was born, Cicely--my old woman--was moody-like and forlorn; Out of her head and crazy, and talked of flowers and trees; Family man yourself, sir? Well, you know what a woman be's.

Narvous she was, and restless,--said that she "couldn't stay." Stay!--and the nearest woman seventeen miles away. But I fixed it up with the doctor, and he said he would be on hand, And I kinder stuck by the shanty, and fenced in that bit o' land.

One night,--the tenth of October,--I woke with a chill and a fright, For the door it was standing open, and Cicely warn't in sight, But a note was pinned on the blanket, which it said that she "couldn't stay," But had gone to visit her neighbor,--seventeen miles away!

When and how she stampeded, I didn't wait for to see, For out in the road, next minit, I started as wild as she; Running first this way and that way, like a hound that is off the scent, For there warn't no track in the darkness to tell me the way she went.

I've had some mighty mean moments afore I kem to this spot,-- Lost on the Plains in '50, drownded almost and shot; But out on this alkali desert, a-hunting a crazy wife, Was ra'ly as on-satis-factory as anything in my life.

"Cicely! Cicely! Cicely!" I called, and I held my breath, And "Cicely!" came from the canyon,--and all was as still as death. And "Cicely! Cicely! Cicely!" came from the rocks below, And jest but a whisper of "Cicely!" down from them peaks of snow.

I ain't what you call religious,--but I jest looked up to the sky, And--this 'yer's to what I'm coming, and maybe ye think I lie: But up away to the east'ard, yaller and big and far, I saw of a suddent rising the singlerist kind of star.

Big and yaller and dancing, it seemed to beckon to me: Yaller and big and dancing, such as you never see: Big and yaller and dancing,--I never saw such a star, And I thought of them sharps in the Bible, and I went for it then and thar.

Over the brush and bowlders I stumbled and pushed ahead, Keeping the star afore me, I went wherever it led. It might hev been for an hour, when suddent and peart and nigh, Out of the yearth afore me thar riz up a baby's cry.

Listen! thar's the same music; but her lungs they are stronger now Than the day I packed her and her mother,--I'm derned if I jest know how. But the doctor kem the next minit, and the joke o' the whole thing is That Cis never knew what happened from that very night to this!

But Cicely says you're a poet, and maybe you might, some day, Jest sling her a rhyme 'bout a baby that was born in a curious way, And see what she says; and, old fellow, when you speak of the star, don't tell As how 'twas the doctor's lantern,--for maybe 'twon't sound so well.

PENELOPE

(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!

"THE BABES IN THE WOODS"

(BIG PINE FLAT, 1871)

"Something characteristic," eh? Humph! I reckon you mean by that Something that happened in our way, Here at the crossin' of Big Pine Flat. Times aren't now as they used to be, When gold was flush and the boys were frisky, And a man would pull out his battery For anything--maybe the price of whiskey.

Nothing of that sort, eh? That's strange! Why, I thought you might be diverted Hearing how Jones of Red Rock Range Drawed his "hint to the unconverted," And saying, "Whar will you have it?" shot Cherokee Bob at the last debating! What was the question I forgot, But Jones didn't like Bob's way of stating.

Nothing of that kind, eh? You mean Something milder? Let's see!--O Joe! Tell to the stranger that little scene Out of the "Babes in the Woods." You know, "Babes" was the name that we gave 'em, sir, Two lean lads in their teens, and greener Than even the belt of spruce and fir Where they built their nest, and each day grew leaner.

No one knew where they came from. None Cared to ask if they had a mother. Runaway schoolboys, maybe. One Tall and dark as a spruce; the other Blue and gold in the eyes and hair, Soft and low in his speech, but rarely Talking with us; and we didn't care To get at their secret at all unfairly.

For they were so quiet, so sad and shy, Content to trust each other solely, That somehow we'd always shut one eye, And never seem to observe them wholly As they passed to their work. 'Twas a worn-out claim, And it paid them grub. They could live without it, For the boys had a way of leaving game In their tent, and forgetting all about it.

Yet no one asked for their secret. Dumb It lay in their big eyes' heavy hollows. It was understood that no one should come To their tent unawares, save the bees and swallows. So they lived alone. Until one warm night I was sitting here at the tent-door,--so, sir! When out of the sunset's rosy light Up rose the Sheriff of Mariposa.

I knew at once there was something wrong, For his hand and his voice shook just a little, And there isn't much you can fetch along To make the sinews of Jack Hill brittle. "Go warn the Babes!" he whispered, hoarse; "Tell them I'm coming--to get and scurry; For I've got a story that's bad,--and worse, I've got a warrant: G-d d--n it, hurry!"

Too late! they had seen him cross the hill; I ran to their tent and found them lying Dead in each other's arms, and still Clasping the drug they had taken flying. And there lay their secret cold and bare, Their life, their trial--the old, old story! For the sweet blue eyes and the golden hair Was a WOMAN'S shame and a WOMAN'S glory.

"Who were they?" Ask no more, or ask The sun that visits their grave so lightly; Ask of the whispering reeds, or task The mourning crickets that chirrup nightly. All of their life but its love forgot, Everything tender and soft and mystic, These are our Babes in the Woods,--you've got, Well--human nature--that's characteristic.

THE LATEST CHINESE OUTRAGE

It was noon by the sun; we had finished our game, And was passin' remarks goin' back to our claim; Jones was countin' his chips, Smith relievin' his mind Of ideas that a "straight" should beat "three of a kind," When Johnson of Elko came gallopin' down, With a look on his face 'twixt a grin and a frown, And he calls, "Drop your shovels and face right about, For them Chinees from Murphy's are cleanin' us out-- With their ching-a-ring-chow And their chic-colorow They're bent upon making No slouch of a row."

Then Jones--my own pardner--looks up with a sigh; "It's your wash-bill," sez he, and I answers, "You lie!" But afore he could draw or the others could arm, Up tumbles the Bates boys, who heard the alarm. And a yell from the hill-top and roar of a gong, Mixed up with remarks like "Hi! yi! Chang-a-wong," And bombs, shells, and crackers, that crashed through the trees, Revealed in their war-togs four hundred Chinees! Four hundred Chinee; We are eight, don't ye see! That made a square fifty To just one o' we.

They were dressed in their best, but I grieve that that same Was largely made up of our own, to their shame; And my pardner's best shirt and his trousers were hung On a spear, and above him were tauntingly swung; While that beggar, Chey Lee, like a conjurer sat Pullin' out eggs and chickens from Johnson's best hat; And Bates's game rooster was part of their "loot," And all of Smith's pigs were skyugled to boot; But the climax was reached and I like to have died When my demijohn, empty, came down the hillside,-- Down the hillside-- What once held the pride Of Robertson County Pitched down the hillside!

Then we axed for a parley. When out of the din To the front comes a-rockin' that heathen, Ah Sin! "You owe flowty dollee--me washee you camp, You catchee my washee--me catchee no stamp; One dollar hap dozen, me no catchee yet, Now that flowty dollee--no hab?--how can get? Me catchee you piggee--me sellee for cash, It catchee me licee--you catchee no 'hash;' Me belly good Sheliff--me lebbee when can, Me allee same halp pin as Melican man! But Melican man He washee him pan On BOTTOM side hillee And catchee--how can?"

"Are we men?" says Joe Johnson, "and list to this jaw, Without process of warrant or color of law? Are we men or--a-chew!"--here be gasped in his speech, For a stink-pot had fallen just out of his reach. "Shall we stand here as idle, and let Asia pour Her barbaric hordes on this civilized shore? Has the White Man no country? Are we left in the lurch? And likewise what's gone of the Established Church? One man to four hundred is great odds, I own, But this 'yer's a White Man--I plays it alone!" And he sprang up the hillside--to stop him none dare-- Till a yell from the top told a "White Man was there!" A White Man was there! We prayed he might spare Those misguided heathens The few clothes they wear.

They fled, and he followed, but no matter where; They fled to escape him,--the "White Man was there,"-- Till we missed first his voice on the pine-wooded slope, And we knew for the heathen henceforth was no hope; And the yells they grew fainter, when Petersen said, "It simply was human to bury his dead." And then, with slow tread, We crept up, in dread, But found nary mortal there, Living or dead.

But there was his trail, and the way that they came, And yonder, no doubt, he was bagging his game. When Jones drops his pickaxe, and Thompson says "Shoo!" And both of 'em points to a cage of bamboo Hanging down from a tree, with a label that swung Conspicuous, with letters in some foreign tongue, Which, when freely translated, the same did appear Was the Chinese for saying, "A White Man is here!" And as we drew near, In anger and fear, Bound hand and foot, Johnson Looked down with a leer!

In his mouth was an opium pipe--which was why He leered at us so with a drunken-like eye! They had shaved off his eyebrows, and tacked on a cue, They had painted his face of a coppery hue, And rigged him all up in a heathenish suit, Then softly departed, each man with his "loot." Yes, every galoot, And Ah Sin, to boot, Had left him there hanging Like ripening fruit.

At a mass meeting held up at Murphy's next day There were seventeen speakers and each had his say; There were twelve resolutions that instantly passed, And each resolution was worse than the last; There were fourteen petitions, which, granting the same, Will determine what Governor Murphy's shall name; And the man from our district that goes up next year Goes up on one issue--that's patent and clear: "Can the work of a mean, Degraded, unclean Believer in Buddha Be held as a lien?"

TRUTHFUL JAMES TO THE EDITOR

(YREKA, 1873)

Which it is not my style To produce needless pain By statements that rile Or that go 'gin the grain, But here's Captain Jack still a-livin', and Nye has no skelp on his brain!

On that Caucasian head There is no crown of hair; It has gone, it has fled! And Echo sez "Where?" And I asks, "Is this Nation a White Man's, and is generally things on the square?"

She was known in the camp As "Nye's other squaw," And folks of that stamp Hez no rights in the law, But is treacherous, sinful, and slimy, as Nye might hev well known before.

But she said that she knew Where the Injins was hid, And the statement was true, For it seemed that she did, Since she led William where he was covered by seventeen Modocs, and-- slid!

Then they reached for his hair; But Nye sez, "By the law Of nations, forbear! I surrenders--no more: And I looks to be treated,--you hear me?--as a pris'ner, a pris'ner of war!"

But Captain Jack rose And he sez, "It's too thin! Such statements as those It's too late to begin. There's a MODOC INDICTMENT agin you, O Paleface, and you're goin' in!

"You stole Schonchin's squaw In the year sixty-two; It was in sixty-four That Long Jack you went through, And you burned Nasty Jim's rancheria, and his wives and his papooses too.

"This gun in my hand Was sold me by you 'Gainst the law of the land, And I grieves it is true!" And he buried his face in his blanket and wept as he hid it from view.

"But you're tried and condemned, And skelping's your doom," And he paused and he hemmed-- But why this resume? He was skelped 'gainst the custom of nations, and cut off like a rose in its bloom.

So I asks without guile, And I trusts not in vain, If this is the style That is going to obtain-- If here's Captain Jack still a-livin', and Nye with no skelp on his brain?

AN IDYL OF THE ROAD

(SIERRAS, 1876)

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

First Tourist Second Tourist Yuba Bill, Driver A Stranger

FIRST TOURIST

Look how the upland plunges into cover, Green where the pines fade sullenly away. Wonderful those olive depths! and wonderful, moreover--

SECOND TOURIST

The red dust that rises in a suffocating way.

FIRST TOURIST

Small is the soul that cannot soar above it, Cannot but cling to its ever-kindred clay: Better be yon bird, that seems to breathe and love it--

SECOND TOURIST

Doubtless a hawk or some other bird of prey. Were we, like him, as sure of a dinner That on our stomachs would comfortably stay; Or were the fried ham a shade or two just thinner, That must confront us at closing of the day: Then might you sing like Theocritus or Virgil, Then might we each make a metrical essay; But verse just now--I must protest and urge--ill Fits a digestion by travel led astray.

CHORUS OF PASSENGERS

Speed, Yuba Bill! oh, speed us to our dinner! Speed to the sunset that beckons far away.

SECOND TOURIST

William of Yuba, O Son of Nimshi, hearken! Check thy profanity, but not thy chariot's play. Tell us, O William, before the shadows darken, Where, and, oh! how we shall dine? O William, say!

YUBA BILL

It ain't my fault, nor the Kumpeney's, I reckon, Ye can't get ez square meal ez any on the Bay, Up at you place, whar the senset 'pears to beckon-- Ez thet sharp allows in his airy sort o' way. Thar woz a place wor yer hash ye might hev wrestled, Kept by a woman ez chipper ez a jay-- Warm in her breast all the morning sunshine nestled; Red on her cheeks all the evening's sunshine lay.

SECOND TOURIST

Praise is but breath, O chariot compeller! Yet of that hash we would bid you farther say.

YUBA BILL

Thar woz a snipe--like you, a fancy tourist-- Kem to that ranch ez if to make a stay, Ran off the gal, and ruined jist the purist Critter that lived--

STRANGER (quietly)

You're a liar, driver!

YUBA BILL (reaching for his revolver).

Eh! Here take my lines, somebody--

CHORUS OF PASSENGERS

Hush, boys! listen! Inside there's a lady! Remember! No affray!

YUBA BILL

Ef that man lives, the fault ain't mine or his'n.

STRANGER

Wait for the sunset that beckons far away, Then--as you will! But, meantime, friends, believe me, Nowhere on earth lives a purer woman; nay, If my perceptions do surely not deceive me, She is the lady we have inside to-day. As for the man--you see that blackened pine tree, Up which the green vine creeps heavenward away! He was that scarred trunk, and she the vine that sweetly Clothed him with life again, and lifted--

SECOND TOURIST

Yes; but pray How know you this?

STRANGER

She's my wife.

YUBA BILL

The h-ll you say!

THOMPSON OF ANGELS

It is the story of Thompson--of Thompson, the hero of Angels. Frequently drunk was Thompson, but always polite to the stranger; Light and free was the touch of Thompson upon his revolver; Great the mortality incident on that lightness and freedom.

Yet not happy or gay was Thompson, the hero of Angels; Often spoke to himself in accents of anguish and sorrow, "Why do I make the graves of the frivolous youth who in folly Thoughtlessly pass my revolver, forgetting its lightness and freedom?

"Why in my daily walks does the surgeon drop his left eyelid, The undertaker smile, and the sculptor of gravestone marbles Lean on his chisel and gaze? I care not o'er much for attention; Simple am I in my ways, save but for this lightness and freedom."

So spake that pensive man--this Thompson, the hero of Angels, Bitterly smiled to himself, as he strode through the chapparal musing. "Why, oh, why?" echoed the pines in the dark olive depth far resounding. "Why, indeed?" whispered the sage brush that bent 'neath his feet non-elastic.

Pleasant indeed was that morn that dawned o'er the barroom at Angels, Where in their manhood's prime was gathered the pride of the hamlet. Six "took sugar in theirs," and nine to the barkeeper lightly Smiled as they said, "Well, Jim, you can give us our regular fusil."

Suddenly as the gray hawk swoops down on the barnyard, alighting Where, pensively picking their corn, the favorite pullets are gathered, So in that festive bar-room dropped Thompson, the hero of Angels, Grasping his weapon dread with his pristine lightness and freedom.

Never a word he spoke; divesting himself of his garments, Danced the war-dance of the playful yet truculent Modoc, Uttered a single whoop, and then, in the accents of challenge, Spake: "Oh, behold in me a Crested Jay Hawk of the mountain."

Then rose a pallid man--a man sick with fever and ague; Small was he, and his step was tremulous, weak, and uncertain; Slowly a Derringer drew, and covered the person of Thompson; Said in his feeblest pipe, "I'm a Bald-headed Snipe of the Valley."

As on its native plains the kangaroo, startled by hunters, Leaps with successive bounds, and hurries away to the thickets, So leaped the Crested Hawk, and quietly hopping behind him Ran, and occasionally shot, that Bald-headed Snipe of the Valley.

Vain at the festive bar still lingered the people of Angels, Hearing afar in the woods the petulant pop of the pistol; Never again returned the Crested Jay Hawk of the mountains, Never again was seen the Bald-headed Snipe of the Valley.

Yet in the hamlet of Angels, when truculent speeches are uttered, When bloodshed and life alone will atone for some trifling misstatement, Maidens and men in their prime recall the last hero of Angels, Think of and vainly regret the Bald-headed Snipe of the Valley!

THE HAWK'S NEST

(SIERRAS)

We checked our pace, the red road sharply rounding; We heard the troubled flow Of the dark olive depths of pines resounding A thousand feet below.

Above the tumult of the canyon lifted, The gray hawk breathless hung, Or on the hill a winged shadow drifted Where furze and thorn-bush clung;

Or where half-way the mountain side was furrowed With many a seam and scar; Or some abandoned tunnel dimly burrowed,-- A mole-hill seen so far.

We looked in silence down across the distant Unfathomable reach: A silence broken by the guide's consistent And realistic speech.

"Walker of Murphy's blew a hole through Peters For telling him he lied; Then up and dusted out of South Hornitos Across the Long Divide.

"We ran him out of Strong's, and up through Eden, And 'cross the ford below, And up this canyon (Peters' brother leadin'), And me and Clark and Joe.

"He fou't us game: somehow I disremember Jest how the thing kem round; Some say 'twas wadding, some a scattered ember From fires on the ground.

"But in one minute all the hill below him Was just one sheet of flame; Guardin' the crest, Sam Clark and I called to him, And,--well, the dog was game!

"He made no sign: the fires of hell were round him, The pit of hell below. We sat and waited, but we never found him; And then we turned to go.

"And then--you see that rock that's grown so bristly With chapparal and tan-- Suthin crep' out: it might hev been a grizzly It might hev been a man;

"Suthin that howled, and gnashed its teeth, and shouted In smoke and dust and flame; Suthin that sprang into the depths about it, Grizzly or man,--but game!

"That's all! Well, yes, it does look rather risky, And kinder makes one queer And dizzy looking down. A drop of whiskey Ain't a bad thing right here!"

HER LETTER

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 upon you.

A dozen engagements I've broken; I left in the midst of a set; Likewise a proposal, half spoken, 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?" "And now, in my higher ambition, With whom do I waltz, flirt, or talk?" "And isn't it nice to have riches, And diamonds and silks, and all that?" "And aren't they 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 picture, 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 soiree of the year,"-- In the mists of a gaze de Chambery, 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-a-vis; And how I once went down the middle With the man that 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 wasn'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. Oh, 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 maybe, 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.

HIS ANSWER TO "HER LETTER"

(REPORTED BY TRUTHFUL JAMES)

Being asked by an intimate party,-- Which the same I would term as a friend,-- Though his health it were vain to call hearty, Since the mind to deceit it might lend; For his arm it was broken quite recent, And there's something gone wrong with his lung,-- Which 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; Though the claim 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,--that very Same rose he is "treasuring now." (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, is true.

For I have a small favor to ask you, As concerns a bull-pup, and 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,-- For 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.

"THE RETURN OF BELISARIUS"

(MUD FLAT, 1860)

So you're back from your travels, old fellow, And you left but a twelvemonth ago; You've hobnobbed with Louis Napoleon, Eugenie, and kissed the Pope's toe. By Jove, it is perfectly stunning, Astounding,--and all that, you know; Yes, things are about as you left them In Mud Flat a twelvemonth ago.

The boys!--they're all right,--Oh! Dick Ashley, He's buried somewhere in the snow; He was lost on the Summit last winter, And Bob has a hard row to hoe. You know that he's got the consumption? You didn't! Well, come, that's a go; I certainly wrote you at Baden,-- Dear me! that was six months ago.

I got all your outlandish letters, All stamped by some foreign P. O. I handed myself to Miss Mary That sketch of a famous chateau. Tom Saunders is living at 'Frisco,-- They say that he cuts quite a show. You didn't meet Euchre-deck Billy Anywhere on your road to Cairo?

So you thought of the rusty old cabin, The pines, and the valley below, And heard the North Fork of the Yuba As you stood on the banks of the Po? 'Twas just like your romance, old fellow; But now there is standing a row Of stores on the site of the cabin That you lived in a twelvemonth ago.

But it's jolly to see you, old fellow,-- To think it's a twelvemonth ago! And you have seen Louis Napoleon, And look like a Johnny Crapaud. Come in. You will surely see Mary,-- You know we are married. What, no? Oh, ay! I forgot there was something Between you a twelvemonth ago.

FURTHER LANGUAGE FROM TRUTHFUL JAMES

(NYE'S FORD, STANISLAUS, 1870)

Do I sleep? do I dream? Do I wonder and doubt? Are things what they seem? Or is visions about? Is our civilization a failure? Or is the Caucasian played out?

Which expressions are strong; Yet would feebly imply Some account of a wrong-- Not to call it a lie-- As was worked off on William, my pardner, And the same being W. Nye.

He came down to the Ford On the very same day Of that lottery drawed By those sharps at the Bay; And he says to me, "Truthful, how goes it?" I replied, "It is far, far from gay;

"For the camp has gone wild On this lottery game, And has even beguiled 'Injin Dick' by the same." Then said Nye to me, "Injins is pizen: But what is his number, eh, James?"

I replied, "7, 2, 9, 8, 4, is his hand;" When he started, and drew Out a list, which he scanned; Then he softly went for his revolver With language I cannot command.

Then I said, "William Nye!" But he turned upon me, And the look in his eye Was quite painful to see; And he says, "You mistake; this poor Injin I protects from such sharps as YOU be!"

I was shocked and withdrew; But I grieve to relate, When he next met my view Injin Dick was his mate; And the two around town was a-lying In a frightfully dissolute state.

Which the war dance they had Round a tree at the Bend Was a sight that was sad; And it seemed that the end Would not justify the proceedings, As I quiet remarked to a friend.

For that Injin he fled The next day to his band; And we found William spread Very loose on the strand, With a peaceful-like smile on his features, And a dollar greenback in his hand;

Which the same, when rolled out, We observed, with surprise, Was what he, no doubt, Thought the number and prize-- Them figures in red in the corner, Which the number of notes specifies.

Was it guile, or a dream? Is it Nye that I doubt? Are things what they seem? Or is visions about? Is our civilization a failure? Or is the Caucasian played out?

AFTER THE ACCIDENT

(MOUTH OF THE SHAFT)

What I want is my husband, sir,-- And if you're a man, sir, You'll give me an answer,-- Where is my Joe?

Penrhyn, sir, Joe,-- Caernarvonshire. Six months ago Since we came here-- Eh?--Ah, you know!

Well, I am quiet And still, But I must stand here, And will! Please, I'll be strong, If you'll just let me wait Inside o' that gate Till the news comes along.

"Negligence!"-- That was the cause!-- Butchery! Are there no laws,-- Laws to protect such as we?

Well, then! I won't raise my voice. There, men! I won't make no noise, Only you just let me be.

Four, only four--did he say-- Saved! and the other ones?--Eh? Why do they call? Why are they all Looking and coming this way?

What's that?--a message? I'll take it. I know his wife, sir, I'll break it. "Foreman!" Ay, ay! "Out by and by,-- Just saved his life. Say to his wife Soon he'll be free." Will I?--God bless you! It's me!

THE GHOST THAT JIM SAW

Why, as to that, said the engineer, Ghosts ain't things we are apt to fear; Spirits don't fool with levers much, And throttle-valves don't take to such; And as for Jim, What happened to him Was one half fact, and t'other half whim!

Running one night on the line, he saw A house--as plain as the moral law-- Just by the moonlit bank, and thence Came a drunken man with no more sense Than to drop on the rail Flat as a flail, As Jim drove by with the midnight mail.

Down went the patents--steam reversed. Too late! for there came a "thud." Jim cursed As the fireman, there in the cab with him, Kinder stared in the face of Jim, And says, "What now?" Says Jim, "What now! I've just run over a man,--that's how!"

The fireman stared at Jim. They ran Back, but they never found house nor man,-- Nary a shadow within a mile. Jim turned pale, but he tried to smile, Then on he tore Ten mile or more, In quicker time than he'd made afore.

Would you believe it! the very next night Up rose that house in the moonlight white, Out comes the chap and drops as before, Down goes the brake and the rest encore; And so, in fact, Each night that act Occurred, till folks swore Jim was cracked.

Humph! let me see; it's a year now, 'most, That I met Jim, East, and says, "How's your ghost?" "Gone," says Jim; "and more, it's plain That ghost don't trouble me again. I thought I shook That ghost when I took A place on an Eastern line,--but look!

"What should I meet, the first trip out, But the very house we talked about, And the selfsame man! 'Well,' says I, 'I guess It's time to stop this 'yer foolishness.' So I crammed on steam, When there came a scream From my fireman, that jest broke my dream:

"'You've killed somebody!' Says I, 'Not much! I've been thar often, and thar ain't no such, And now I'll prove it!' Back we ran, And--darn my skin!--but thar WAS a man On the rail, dead, Smashed in the head!-- Now I call that meanness!" That's all Jim said.

"SEVENTY-NINE"

(MR. INTERVIEWER INTERVIEWED)

Know me next time when you see me, won't you, old smarty? Oh, I mean YOU, old figger-head,--just the same party! Take out your pensivil, d--n you; sharpen it, do! Any complaints to make? Lots of 'em--one of 'em's YOU.

You! who are YOU, anyhow, goin' round in that sneakin' way? Never in jail before, was you, old blatherskite, say? Look at it; don't it look pooty? Oh, grin, and be d--d to you, do! But if I had you this side o' that gratin,' I'd just make it lively for you.

How did I get in here? Well what 'ud you give to know? 'Twasn't by sneakin' round where I hadn't no call to go; 'Twasn't by hangin' round a-spyin' unfortnet men. Grin! but I'll stop your jaw if ever you do that agen.

Why don't you say suthin, blast you? Speak your mind if you dare. Ain't I a bad lot, sonny? Say it, and call it square. Hain't got no tongue, hey, hev ye? Oh, guard! here's a little swell A cussin' and swearin' and yellin', and bribin' me not to tell.

There! I thought that 'ud fetch ye! And you want to know my name? "Seventy-nine" they call me, but that is their little game; For I'm werry highly connected, as a gent, sir, can understand, And my family hold their heads up with the very furst in the land.

For 'twas all, sir, a put-up job on a pore young man like me; And the jury was bribed a puppos, and at furst they couldn't agree; And I sed to the judge, sez I,--Oh, grin! it's all right, my son! But you're a werry lively young pup, and you ain't to be played upon!

Wot's that you got?--tobacco? I'm cussed but I thought 'twas a tract. Thank ye! A chap t'other day--now, lookee, this is a fact-- Slings me a tract on the evils o' keepin' bad company, As if all the saints was howlin' to stay here along o' we.

No, I hain't no complaints. Stop, yes; do you see that chap,-- Him standin' over there, a-hidin' his eyes in his cap? Well, that man's stumick is weak, and he can't stand the pris'n fare; For the coffee is just half beans, and the sugar it ain't nowhere.

Perhaps it's his bringin' up; but he's sickenin' day by day, And he doesn't take no food, and I'm seein' him waste away. And it isn't the thing to see; for, whatever he's been and done, Starvation isn't the plan as he's to be saved upon.

For he cannot rough it like me; and he hasn't the stamps, I guess, To buy him his extry grub outside o' the pris'n mess. And perhaps if a gent like you, with whom I've been sorter free, Would--thank you! But, say! look here! Oh, blast it! don't give it to ME!

Don't you give it to me; now, don't ye, don't ye, DON'T! You think it's a put-up job; so I'll thank ye, sir, if you won't. But hand him the stamps yourself: why, he isn't even my pal; And, if it's a comfort to you, why, I don't intend that he shall.

THE STAGE-DRIVER'S STORY

It was the stage-driver's story, as he stood with his back to the wheelers, Quietly flecking his whip, and turning his quid of tobacco; While on the dusty road, and blent with the rays of the moonlight, We saw the long curl of his lash and the juice of tobacco descending.

"Danger! Sir, I believe you,--indeed, I may say, on that subject, You your existence might put to the hazard and turn of a wager. I have seen danger? Oh, no! not me, sir, indeed, I assure you: 'Twas only the man with the dog that is sitting alone in yon wagon.

"It was the Geiger Grade, a mile and a half from the summit: Black as your hat was the night, and never a star in the heavens. Thundering down the grade, the gravel and stones we sent flying Over the precipice side,--a thousand feet plumb to the bottom.

"Half-way down the grade I felt, sir, a thrilling and creaking, Then a lurch to one side, as we hung on the bank of the canyon; Then, looking up the road, I saw, in the distance behind me, The off hind wheel of the coach, just loosed from its axle, and following.

"One glance alone I gave, then gathered together my ribbons, Shouted, and flung them, outspread, on the straining necks of my cattle; Screamed at the top of my voice, and lashed the air in my frenzy, While down the Geiger Grade, on THREE wheels, the vehicle thundered.

"Speed was our only chance, when again came the ominous rattle: Crack, and another wheel slipped away, and was lost in the darkness. TWO only now were left; yet such was our fearful momentum, Upright, erect, and sustained on TWO wheels, the vehicle thundered.

"As some huge boulder, unloosed from its rocky shelf on the mountain, Drives before it the hare and the timorous squirrel, far leaping, So down the Geiger Grade rushed the Pioneer coach, and before it Leaped the wild horses, and shrieked in advance of the danger impending.

"But to be brief in my tale. Again, ere we came to the level, Slipped from its axle a wheel; so that, to be plain in my statement, A matter of twelve hundred yards or more, as the distance may be, We traveled upon ONE wheel, until we drove up to the station.

"Then, sir, we sank in a heap; but, picking myself from the ruins, I heard a noise up the grade; and looking, I saw in the distance The three wheels following still, like moons on the horizon whirling, Till, circling, they gracefully sank on the road at the side of the station.

"This is my story, sir; a trifle, indeed, I assure you. Much more, perchance, might be said--but I hold him of all men most lightly Who swerves from the truth in his tale. No, thank you-- Well, since you ARE pressing, Perhaps I don't care if I do: you may give me the same, Jim,--no sugar."

A QUESTION OF PRIVILEGE

REPORTED BY TRUTHFUL JAMES

It was Andrew Jackson Sutter who, despising Mr. Cutter for remarks he heard him utter in debate upon the floor, Swung him up into the skylight, in the peaceful, pensive twilight, and then keerlessly proceeded, makin' no account what WE did-- To wipe up with his person casual dust upon the floor.

Now a square fight never frets me, nor unpleasantness upsets me, but the simple thing that gets me--now the job is done and gone, And we've come home free and merry from the peaceful cemetery, leavin' Cutter there with Sutter--that mebbee just a stutter On the part of Mr. Cutter caused the loss we deeply mourn.

Some bashful hesitation, just like spellin' punctooation--might have worked an aggravation on to Sutter's mournful mind, For the witnesses all vary ez to wot was said and nary a galoot will toot his horn except the way he is inclined.

But they all allow that Sutter had begun a kind of mutter, when uprose Mr. Cutter with a sickening kind of ease, And proceeded then to wade in to the subject then prevadin': "Is Profanity degradin'?" in words like unto these:

"Onlike the previous speaker, Mr. Sutter of Yreka, he was but a humble seeker--and not like him--a cuss"-- It was here that Mr. Sutter softly reached for Mr. Cutter, when the latter with a stutter said: "ac-customed to discuss."

Then Sutter he rose grimly, and sorter smilin' dimly bowed onto the Chairman primly--(just like Cutter ez could be!) Drawled "he guessed he must fall--back--as--Mr. Cutter owned the pack--as--he just had played the--Jack--as--" (here Cutter's gun went crack! as Mr. Sutter gasped and ended) "every man can see!"

But William Henry Pryor--just in range of Sutter's fire--here evinced a wild desire to do somebody harm, And in the general scrimmage no one thought if Sutter's "image" was a misplaced punctooation--like the hole in Pryor's arm.

For we all waltzed in together, never carin' to ask whether it was Sutter or was Cutter we woz tryin' to abate. But we couldn't help perceivin', when we took to inkstand heavin', that the process was relievin' to the sharpness of debate,

So we've come home free and merry from the peaceful cemetery, and I make no commentary on these simple childish games; Things is various and human--and the man ain't born of woman who is free to intermeddle with his pal's intents and aims.

THE THOUGHT-READER OF ANGELS

REPORTED BY TRUTHFUL JAMES

We hev tumbled ez dust Or ez worms of the yearth; Wot we looked for hez bust! We are objects of mirth! They have played us--old Pards of the river!--they hev played us for all we was worth!

Was it euchre or draw Cut us off in our bloom? Was it faro, whose law Is uncertain ez doom? Or an innocent "Jack pot" that--opened--was to us ez the jaws of the tomb?

It was nary! It kem With some sharps from the States. Ez folks sez, "All things kem To the fellers ez waits;" And we'd waited six months for that suthin'--had me and Bill Nye--in such straits!

And it kem. It was small; It was dream-like and weak; It wore store clothes--that's all That we knew, so to speak; But it called itself "Billson, Thought-Reader"--which ain't half a name for its cheek!

He could read wot you thought, And he knew wot you did; He could find things untaught, No matter whar hid; And he went to it, blindfold and smiling, being led by the hand like a kid!

Then I glanced at Bill Nye, And I sez, without pride, "You'll excuse US. We've nigh On to nothin' to hide; But if some gent will lend us a twenty, we'll hide it whar folks shall decide."

It was Billson's own self Who forked over the gold, With a smile. "Thar's the pelf," He remarked. "I make bold To advance it, and go twenty better that I'll find it without being told."

Then I passed it to Nye, Who repassed it to me. And we bandaged each eye Of that Billson--ez we Softly dropped that coin in his coat pocket, ez the hull crowd around us could see.

That was all. He'd one hand Locked in mine. Then he groped. We could not understand Why that minit Nye sloped, For we knew we'd the dead thing on Billson--even more than we dreamed of or hoped.

For he stood thar in doubt With his hand to his head; Then he turned, and lit out Through the door where Nye fled, Draggin' me and the rest of us arter, while we larfed till we thought we was dead,

Till he overtook Nye And went through him. Words fail For what follers! Kin I Paint our agonized wail Ez he drew from Nye's pocket that twenty wot we sworn was in his own coat-tail!

And it WAS! But, when found, It proved bogus and brass! And the question goes round How the thing kem to pass? Or, if PASSED, woz it passed thar by William; and I listens, and echoes "Alas!

"For the days when the skill Of the keerds was no blind, When no effort of will Could beat four of a kind, When the thing wot you held in your hand, Pard, was worth more than the thing in your mind."

THE SPELLING BEE AT ANGELS

(REPORTED BY TRUTHFUL JAMES)

Waltz in, waltz in, ye little kids, and gather round my knee, And drop them books and first pot-hooks, and hear a yarn from me. I kin not sling a fairy tale of Jinnys* fierce and wild, For I hold it is unchristian to deceive a simple child; But as from school yer driftin' by, I thowt ye'd like to hear Of a "Spelling Bee" at Angels that we organized last year.

It warn't made up of gentle kids, of pretty kids, like you, But gents ez hed their reg'lar growth, and some enough for two. There woz Lanky Jim of Sutter's Fork and Bilson of Lagrange, And "Pistol Bob," who wore that day a knife by way of change. You start, you little kids, you think these are not pretty names, But each had a man behind it, and--my name is Truthful James.

There was Poker Dick from Whisky Flat, and Smith of Shooter's Bend, And Brown of Calaveras--which I want no better friend; Three-fingered Jack--yes, pretty dears, three fingers--YOU have five. Clapp cut off two--it's sing'lar, too, that Clapp ain't now alive. 'Twas very wrong indeed, my dears, and Clapp was much to blame; Likewise was Jack, in after-years, for shootin' of that same.

The nights was kinder lengthenin' out, the rains had jest begun, When all the camp came up to Pete's to have their usual fun; But we all sot kinder sad-like around the bar-room stove Till Smith got up, permiskiss-like, and this remark he hove: "Thar's a new game down in Frisco, that ez far ez I can see Beats euchre, poker, and van-toon, they calls the 'Spellin' Bee.'"

Then Brown of Calaveras simply hitched his chair and spake, "Poker is good enough for me," and Lanky Jim sez, "Shake!" And Bob allowed he warn't proud, but he "must say right thar That the man who tackled euchre hed his education squar." This brought up Lenny Fairchild, the schoolmaster, who said He knew the game, and he would give instructions on that head.

"For instance, take some simple word," sez he, "like 'separate:' Now who can spell it?" Dog my skin, ef thar was one in eight. This set the boys all wild at once. The chairs was put in row, And at the head was Lanky Jim, and at the foot was Joe, And high upon the bar itself the schoolmaster was raised, And the bar-keep put his glasses down, and sat and silent gazed.

The first word out was "parallel," and seven let it be, Till Joe waltzed in his "double l" betwixt the "a" and "e;" For since he drilled them Mexicans in San Jacinto's fight Thar warn't no prouder man got up than Pistol Joe that night-- Till "rhythm" came! He tried to smile, then said "they had him there," And Lanky Jim, with one long stride, got up and took his chair.

O little kids, my pretty kids, 'twas touchin' to survey These bearded men, with weppings on, like schoolboys at their play. They'd laugh with glee, and shout to see each other lead the van, And Bob sat up as monitor with a cue for a rattan, Till the Chair gave out "incinerate," and Brown said he'd be durned If any such blamed word as that in school was ever learned.

When "phthisis" came they all sprang up, and vowed the man who rung Another blamed Greek word on them be taken out and hung. As they sat down again I saw in Bilson's eye a flash, And Brown of Calaveras was a-twistin' his mustache, And when at last Brown slipped on "gneiss," and Bilson took his chair, He dropped some casual words about some folks who dyed their hair.

And then the Chair grew very white, and the Chair said he'd adjourn, But Poker Dick remarked that HE would wait and get his turn; Then with a tremblin' voice and hand, and with a wanderin' eye, The Chair next offered "eider-duck," and Dick began with "I", And Bilson smiled--then Bilson shrieked! Just how the fight begun I never knowed, for Bilson dropped, and Dick, he moved up one.

Then certain gents arose and said "they'd business down in camp," And "ez the road was rather dark, and ez the night was damp, They'd"--here got up Three-fingered Jack and locked the door and yelled: "No, not one mother's son goes out till that thar word is spelled!" But while the words were on his lips, he groaned and sank in pain, And sank with Webster on his chest and Worcester on his brain.

Below the bar dodged Poker Dick, and tried to look ez he Was huntin' up authorities thet no one else could see; And Brown got down behind the stove, allowin' he "was cold," Till it upsot and down his legs the cinders freely rolled, And several gents called "Order!" till in his simple way Poor Smith began with "O-r"--"Or"--and he was dragged away.

O little kids, my pretty kids, down on your knees and pray! You've got your eddication in a peaceful sort of way; And bear in mind thar may be sharps ez slings their spellin' square, But likewise slings their bowie-knives without a thought or care. You wants to know the rest, my dears? Thet's all! In me you see The only gent that lived to tell about the Spellin' Bee!

------

He ceased and passed, that truthful man; the children went their way With downcast heads and downcast hearts--but not to sport or play. For when at eve the lamps were lit, and supperless to bed Each child was sent, with tasks undone and lessons all unsaid, No man might know the awful woe that thrilled their youthful frames, As they dreamed of Angels Spelling Bee and thought of Truthful James.

* Qy. Genii.

ARTEMIS IN SIERRA

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

Poet. Philosopher. Jones of Mariposa.

POET

Halt! Here we are. Now wheel your mare a trifle Just where you stand; then doff your hat and swear Never yet was scene you might cover with your rifle Half as complete or as marvelously fair.

PHILOSOPHER

Dropped from Olympus or lifted out of Tempe, Swung like a censer betwixt the earth and sky! He who in Greece sang of flocks and flax and hemp,--he Here might recall them--six thousand feet on high!

POET

Well you may say so. The clamor of the river, Hum of base toil, and man's ignoble strife, Halt far below, where the stifling sunbeams quiver, But never climb to this purer, higher life!

Not to this glade, where Jones of Mariposa, Simple and meek as his flocks we're looking at, Tends his soft charge; nor where his daughter Rosa-- (A shot.) Hallo! What's that?

PHILOSOPHER

A--something thro' my hat-- Bullet, I think. You were speaking of his daughter?

POET

Yes; but--your hat you were moving through the leaves; Likely he thought it some eagle bent on slaughter. Lightly he shoots-- (A second shot.)

PHILOSOPHER

As one readily perceives. Still, he improves! This time YOUR hat has got it, Quite near the band! Eh? Oh, just as you please-- Stop, or go on.

POET

Perhaps we'd better trot it Down through the hollow, and up among the trees.

BOTH

Trot, trot, trot, where the bullets cannot follow; Trot down and up again among the laurel trees.

PHILOSOPHER

Thanks, that is better; now of this shot-dispensing Jones and his girl--you were saying--

POET

Well, you see-- I--hang it all!--Oh! what's the use of fencing! Sir, I confess it!--these shots were meant for ME.

PHILOSOPHER

Are you mad!

POET

God knows, I shouldn't wonder! I love this coy nymph, who, coldly--as yon peak Shines on the river it feeds, yet keeps asunder-- Long have I worshiped, but never dared to speak.

Till she, no doubt, her love no longer hiding, Waked by some chance word her father's jealousy; Slips her disdain--as an avalanche down gliding Sweeps flocks and kin away--to clear a path for ME.

Hence his attack.

PHILOSOPHER

I see. What I admire Chiefly, I think, in your idyl, so to speak, Is the cool modesty that checks your youthful fire,-- Absence of self-love and abstinence of cheek!

Still, I might mention, I've met the gentle Rosa,-- Danced with her thrice, to her father's jealous dread; And, it is possible, she's happened to disclose a-- Ahem! You can fancy why he shoots at ME instead.

POET

YOU?

PHILOSOPHER

Me. But kindly take your hand from your revolver, I am not choleric--but accidents may chance. And here's the father, who alone can be the solver Of this twin riddle of the hat and the romance.

Enter JONES OF MARIPOSA.

POET

Speak, shepherd--mine!

PHILOSOPHER

Hail! Time-and-cartridge waster, Aimless exploder of theories and skill! Whom do you shoot?

JONES OF MARIPOSA

Well, shootin' ain't my taste, or EF I shoot anything--I only shoot to kill.

That ain't what's up. I only kem to tell ye-- Sportin' or courtin'--trot homeward for your life! Gals will be gals, and p'r'aps it's just ez well ye Larned there was one had no wish to be--a wife.

POET

What?

PHILOSOPHER

Is this true?

JONES OF MARIPOSA

I reckon it looks like it. She saw ye comin'. My gun was standin' by; She made a grab, and 'fore I up could strike it, Blazed at ye both! The critter is SO shy!

POET

Who?

JONES OF MARIPOSA

My darter!

PHILOSOPHER

Rosa?

JONES OF MARIPOSA

Same! Good-by!

JACK OF THE TULES

(SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA)

Shrewdly you question, Senor, and I fancy You are no novice. Confess that to little Of my poor gossip of Mission and Pueblo You are a stranger!

Am I not right? Ah! believe me, that ever Since we joined company at the posada I've watched you closely, and--pardon an old priest-- I've caught you smiling!

Smiling to hear an old fellow like me talk Gossip of pillage and robbers, and even Air his opinion of law and alcaldes Like any other!

Now!--by that twist of the wrist on the bridle, By that straight line from the heel to the shoulder, By that curt speech,--nay! nay! no offense, son,-- You are a soldier?

No? Then a man of affairs? San Sebastian! 'Twould serve me right if I prattled thus wildly To--say a sheriff? No?--just caballero? Well, more's the pity.

Ah! what we want here's a man of your presence; Sano, Secreto,--yes, all the four S's, Joined with a boldness and dash, when the time comes, And--may I say it?--

One not TOO hard on the poor country people, Peons and silly vaqueros, who, dazzled By reckless skill, and, perchance, reckless largesse, Wink at some queer things.

No? You would crush THEM as well as the robbers,-- Root them out, scatter them? Ah you are bitter-- And yet--quien sabe, perhaps that's the one way To catch their leader.

As to myself, now, I'd share your displeasure; For I admit in this Jack of the Tules Certain good points. He still comes to confession-- You'd "like to catch him"?

Ah, if you did at such times, you might lead him Home by a thread. Good! Again you are smiling: You have no faith in such shrift, and but little In priest or penitent.

Bueno! We take no offense, sir; whatever It please you to say, it becomes us, for Church sake, To bear in peace. Yet, if you were kinder-- And less suspicious--

I might still prove to you, Jack of the Tules Shames not our teaching; nay, even might show you, Hard by this spot, his old comrade, who, wounded, Lives on his bounty.

If--ah, you listen!--I see I can trust you; Then, on your word as a gentleman--follow. Under that sycamore stands the old cabin; There sits his comrade.

Eh!--are you mad? You would try to ARREST him? You, with a warrant? Oh, well, take the rest of them: Pedro, Bill, Murray, Pat Doolan. Hey!--all of you, Tumble out, d--n it!

There!--that'll do, boys! Stand back! Ease his elbows; Take the gag from his mouth. Good! Now scatter like devils After his posse--four straggling, four drunken-- At the posada.

You--help me off with these togs, and then vamos! Now, ole Jeff Dobbs!--Sheriff, Scout, and Detective! You're so derned 'cute! Kinder sick, ain't ye, bluffing Jack of the Tules!

IV. MISCELLANEOUS

A GREYPORT LEGEND

(1797)

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 mid-day The hulk that lay by the rotting pier, Filled with the children in happy play, Parted its moorings and drifted clear, Drifted clear beyond 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 came 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; For the voices of children, still at play In a phantom hulk that drifts alway Through channels whose waters never fail.

It is but a foolish shipman's tale, A theme for a poet's idle page; But still, when the mists of Doubt prevail, And we lie becalmed by the shores of Age, We hear from the misty troubled shore The voice of the children gone before, Drawing the soul to its anchorage.

A NEWPORT ROMANCE

They say that she died of a broken heart (I tell the tale as 'twas told to me); But her spirit lives, and her soul is part Of this sad old house by the sea.

Her lover was fickle and fine and French: It was nearly a hundred years ago When he sailed away from her arms--poor wench!-- With the Admiral Rochambeau.

I marvel much what periwigged phrase Won the heart of this sentimental Quaker, At what gold-laced speech of those modish days She listened--the mischief take her!

But she kept the posies of mignonette That he gave; and ever as their bloom failed And faded (though with her tears still wet) Her youth with their own exhaled.

Till one night, when the sea-fog wrapped a shroud Round spar and spire and tarn and tree, Her soul went up on that lifted cloud From this sad old house by the sea.

And ever since then, when the clock strikes two, She walks unbidden from room to room, And the air is filled that she passes through With a subtle, sad perfume.

The delicate odor of mignonette, The ghost of a dead-and-gone bouquet, Is all that tells of her story; yet Could she think of a sweeter way?

I sit in the sad old house to-night,-- Myself a ghost from a farther sea; And I trust that this Quaker woman might, In courtesy, visit me.

For the laugh is fled from porch and lawn, And the bugle died from the fort on the hill, And the twitter of girls on the stairs is gone, And the grand piano is still.

Somewhere in the darkness a clock strikes two: And there is no sound in the sad old house, But the long veranda dripping with dew, And in the wainscot a mouse.

The light of my study-lamp streams out From the library door, but has gone astray In the depths of the darkened hall. Small doubt But the Quakeress knows the way.

Was it the trick of a sense o'erwrought With outward watching and inward fret? But I swear that the air just now was fraught With the odor of mignonette!

I open the window, and seem almost-- So still lies the ocean--to hear the beat Of its Great Gulf artery off the coast, And to bask in its tropic heat.

In my neighbor's windows the gas-lights flare, As the dancers swing in a waltz of Strauss; And I wonder now could I fit that air To the song of this sad old house.

And no odor of mignonette there is, But the breath of morn on the dewy lawn; And mayhap from causes as slight as this The quaint old legend is born.

But the soul of that subtle, sad perfume, As the spiced embalmings, they say, outlast The mummy laid in his rocky tomb, Awakens my buried past.

And I think of the passion that shook my youth, Of its aimless loves and its idle pains, And am thankful now for the certain truth That only the sweet remains.

And I hear no rustle of stiff brocade, And I see no face at my library door; For now that the ghosts of my heart are laid, She is viewless for evermore.

But whether she came as a faint perfume, Or whether a spirit in stole of white, I feel, as I pass from the darkened room, She has been with my soul to-night!

SAN FRANCISCO

(FROM THE SEA)

Serene, indifferent of Fate, Thou sittest at the Western Gate;

Upon thy height, so lately won, Still slant the banners of the sun;

Thou seest the white seas strike their tents, O Warder of two continents!

And, scornful of the peace that flies Thy angry winds and sullen skies,

Thou drawest all things, small, or great, To thee, beside the Western Gate.

O lion's whelp, that hidest fast In jungle growth of spire and mast!

I know thy cunning and thy greed, Thy hard high lust and willful deed,

And all thy glory loves to tell Of specious gifts material.

Drop down, O Fleecy Fog, and hide Her skeptic sneer and all her pride!

Wrap her, O Fog, in gown and hood Of her Franciscan Brotherhood.

Hide me her faults, her sin and blame; With thy gray mantle cloak her shame!

So shall she, cowled, sit and pray Till morning bears her sins away.

Then rise, O Fleecy Fog, and raise The glory of her coming days;

Be as the cloud that flecks the seas Above her smoky argosies;

When forms familiar shall give place To stranger speech and newer face;

When all her throes and anxious fears Lie hushed in the repose of years;

When Art shall raise and Culture lift The sensual joys and meaner thrift,

And all fulfilled the vision we Who watch and wait shall never see;

Who, in the morning of her race, Toiled fair or meanly in our place,

But, yielding to the common lot, Lie unrecorded and forgot.

THE MOUNTAIN HEART'S-EASE

By scattered rocks and turbid waters shifting, By furrowed glade and dell, To feverish men thy calm, sweet face uplifting, Thou stayest them to tell

The delicate thought that cannot find expression, For ruder speech too fair, That, like thy petals, trembles in possession, And scatters on the air.

The miner pauses in his rugged labor, And, leaning on his spade, Laughingly calls unto his comrade-neighbor To see thy charms displayed.

But in his eyes a mist unwonted rises, And for a moment clear Some sweet home face his foolish thought surprises, And passes in a tear,--

Some boyish vision of his Eastern village, Of uneventful toil, Where golden harvests followed quiet tillage Above a peaceful soil.

One moment only; for the pick, uplifting, Through root and fibre cleaves, And on the muddy current slowly drifting Are swept by bruised leaves.

And yet, O poet, in thy homely fashion, Thy work thou dost fulfill, For on the turbid current of his passion Thy face is shining still!

GRIZZLY.

Coward,--of heroic size, In whose lazy muscles lies Strength we fear and yet despise; Savage,--whose relentless tusks Are content with acorn husks; Robber,--whose exploits ne'er soared O'er the bee's or squirrel's hoard; Whiskered chin and feeble nose, Claws of steel on baby toes,-- Here, in solitude and shade, Shambling, shuffling plantigrade, Be thy courses undismayed!

Here, where Nature makes thy bed, Let thy rude, half-human tread Point to hidden Indian springs, Lost in ferns and fragrant grasses, Hovered o'er by timid wings, Where the wood-duck lightly passes, Where the wild bee holds her sweets,-- Epicurean retreats, Fit for thee, and better than Fearful spoils of dangerous man. In thy fat-jowled deviltry Friar Tuck shall live in thee; Thou mayst levy tithe and dole; Thou shalt spread the woodland cheer, From the pilgrim taking toll; Match thy cunning with his fear; Eat, and drink, and have thy fill; Yet remain an outlaw still!

MADRONO

Captain of the Western wood, Thou that apest Robin Hood! Green above thy scarlet hose, How thy velvet mantle shows! Never tree like thee arrayed, O thou gallant of the glade!

When the fervid August sun Scorches all it looks upon, And the balsam of the pine Drips from stem to needle fine, Round thy compact shade arranged, Not a leaf of thee is changed!

When the yellow autumn sun Saddens all it looks upon, Spreads its sackcloth on the hills, Strews its ashes in the rills, Thou thy scarlet hose dost doff, And in limbs of purest buff Challengest the sombre glade For a sylvan masquerade.

Where, oh, where, shall he begin Who would paint thee, Harlequin? With thy waxen burnished leaf, With thy branches' red relief, With thy polytinted fruit,-- In thy spring or autumn suit,-- Where begin, and oh, where end, Thou whose charms all art transcend?

COYOTE

Blown out of the prairie in twilight and dew, Half bold and half timid, yet lazy all through; Loath ever to leave, and yet fearful to stay, He limps in the clearing, an outcast in gray.

A shade on the stubble, a ghost by the wall, Now leaping, now limping, now risking a fall, Lop-eared and large-jointed, but ever alway A thoroughly vagabond outcast in gray.

Here, Carlo, old fellow,--he's one of your kind,-- Go, seek him, and bring him in out of the wind. What! snarling, my Carlo! So even dogs may Deny their own kin in the outcast in gray.

Well, take what you will,--though it be on the sly, Marauding or begging,--I shall not ask why, But will call it a dole, just to help on his way A four-footed friar in orders of gray!

TO A SEA-BIRD

(SANTA CRUZ, 1869)

Sauntering hither on listless wings, Careless vagabond of the sea, Little thou heedest the surf that sings, The bar that thunders, the shale that rings,-- Give me to keep thy company.

Little thou hast, old friend, that's new; Storms and wrecks are old things to thee; Sick am I of these changes, too; Little to care for, little to rue,-- I on the shore, and thou on the sea.

All of thy wanderings, far and near, Bring thee at last to shore and me; All of my journeyings end them here: This our tether must be our cheer,-- I on the shore, and thou on the sea.

Lazily rocking on ocean's breast, Something in common, old friend, have we: Thou on the shingle seek'st thy nest, I to the waters look for rest,-- I on the shore, and thou on the sea.

WHAT THE CHIMNEY SANG

Over the chimney the night-wind sang And chanted a melody no one knew; And the Woman stopped, as her babe she tossed, And thought of the one she had long since lost, And said, as her teardrops back she forced, "I hate the wind in the chimney."

Over the chimney the night-wind sang And chanted a melody no one knew; And the Children said, as they closer drew, "'Tis some witch that is cleaving the black night through, 'Tis a fairy trumpet that just then blew, And we fear the wind in the chimney."

Over the chimney the night-wind sang And chanted a melody no one knew; And the Man, as he sat on his hearth below, Said to himself, "It will surely snow, And fuel is dear and wages low, And I'll stop the leak in the chimney."

Over the chimney the night-wind sang And chanted a melody no one knew; But the Poet listened and smiled, for he Was Man and Woman and Child, all three, And said, "It is God's own harmony, This wind we hear in the chimney."

DICKENS IN CAMP

Above the pines the moon was slowly drifting, The river sang below; The dim Sierras, far beyond, uplifting Their minarets of snow.

The roaring camp-fire, with rude humor, painted The ruddy tints of health On haggard face and form that drooped and fainted In the fierce race for wealth;

Till one arose, and from his pack's scant treasure A hoarded volume drew, And cards were dropped from hands of listless leisure To hear the tale anew.

And then, while round them shadows gathered faster, And as the firelight fell, He read aloud the book wherein the Master Had writ of "Little Nell."

Perhaps 'twas boyish fancy,--for the reader Was youngest of them all,-- But, as he read, from clustering pine and cedar A silence seemed to fall;

The fir-trees, gathering closer in the shadows, Listened in every spray, While the whole camp with "Nell" on English meadows Wandered and lost their way.

And so in mountain solitudes--o'ertaken As by some spell divine-- 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-vine's incense all the pensive glory That fills the Kentish hills.

And on that grave where English oak and holly And laurel wreaths entwine, Deem it not all a too presumptuous folly, This spray of Western pine!

July, 1870.

"TWENTY YEARS"

Beg your pardon, old fellow! I think I was dreaming just now when you spoke. The fact is, the musical clink Of the ice on your wine-goblet's brink A chord of my memory woke.

And I stood in the pasture-field where Twenty summers ago I had stood; And I heard in that sound, I declare, The clinking of bells in the air, Of the cows coming home from the wood.

Then the apple-bloom shook on the hill; And the mullein-stalks tilted each lance; And the sun behind Rapalye's mill Was my uttermost West, and could thrill Like some fanciful land of romance.

Then my friend was a hero, and then My girl was an angel. In fine, I drank buttermilk; for at ten Faith asks less to aid her than when At thirty we doubt over wine.

Ah, well, it DOES seem that I must Have been dreaming just now when you spoke, Or lost, very like, in the dust Of the years that slow fashioned the crust On that bottle whose seal you last broke.

Twenty years was its age, did you say? Twenty years? Ah, my friend, it is true! All the dreams that have flown since that day, All the hopes in that time passed away, Old friend, I've been drinking with you!

FATE

"The sky is clouded, the rocks are bare, The spray of the tempest is white in air; The winds are out with the waves at play, And I shall not tempt the sea to-day.

"The trail is narrow, the wood is dim, The panther clings to the arching limb; And the lion's whelps are abroad at play, And I shall not join in the chase to-day."

But the ship sailed safely over the sea, And the hunters came from the chase in glee; And the town that was builded upon a rock Was swallowed up in the earthquake shock.

GRANDMOTHER TENTERDEN

(MASSACHUSETTS SHORE, 1800)

I mind it was but yesterday: The sun was dim, the air was chill; Below the town, below the hill, The sails of my son's ship did fill,-- My Jacob, who was cast away.

He said, "God keep you, mother dear," But did not turn to kiss his wife; They had some foolish, idle strife; Her tongue was like a two-edged knife, And he was proud as any peer.

Howbeit that night I took no note Of sea nor sky, for all was drear; I marked not that the hills looked near, Nor that the moon, though curved and clear, Through curd-like scud did drive and float.

For with my darling went the joy Of autumn woods and meadows brown; I came to hate the little town; It seemed as if the sun went down With him, my only darling boy.

It was the middle of the night: The wind, it shifted west-by-south,-- It piled high up the harbor mouth; The marshes, black with summer drouth, Were all abroad with sea-foam white.

It was the middle of the night: The sea upon the garden leapt, And my son's wife in quiet slept, And I, his mother, waked and wept, When lo! there came a sudden light.

And there he stood! His seaman's dress All wet and dripping seemed to be; The pale blue fires of the sea Dripped from his garments constantly,-- I could not speak through cowardness.

"I come through night and storm," he said. "Through storm and night and death," said he, "To kiss my wife, if it so be That strife still holds 'twixt her and me, For all beyond is peace," he said.

"The sea is His, and He who sent The wind and wave can soothe their strife And brief and foolish is our life." He stooped and kissed his sleeping wife, Then sighed, and like a dream he went.

Now, when my darling kissed not me, But her--his wife--who did not wake, My heart within me seemed to break; I swore a vow, nor thenceforth spake Of what my clearer eyes did see.

And when the slow weeks brought him not, Somehow we spake of aught beside: For she--her hope upheld her pride; And I--in me all hope had died, And my son passed as if forgot.

It was about the next springtide: She pined and faded where she stood, Yet spake no word of ill or good; She had the hard, cold Edwards' blood In all her veins--and so she died.

One time I thought, before she passed, To give her peace; but ere I spake Methought, "HE will be first to break The news in heaven," and for his sake I held mine back until the last.

And here I sit, nor care to roam; I only wait to hear his call. I doubt not that this day next fall Shall see me safe in port, where all And every ship at last comes home.

And you have sailed the Spanish Main, And knew my Jacob?... Eh! Mercy! Ah! God of wisdom! hath the sea Yielded its dead to humble me? My boy!... My Jacob!... Turn again!

GUILD'S SIGNAL

[William Guild was engineer of the train which on the 19th of April, 1813, plunged into Meadow Brook, on the line of the Stonington and Providence Railroad. It was his custom, as often as he passed his home, to whistle an "All's well" to his wife. He was found, after the disaster, dead, with his hand on the throttle-valve of his engine.]

Two low whistles, quaint and clear: That was the signal the engineer-- That was the signal that Guild, 'tis said-- Gave to his wife at Providence, As through the sleeping town, and thence, Out in the night, On to the light, Down past the farms, lying white, he sped!

As a husband's greeting, scant, no doubt, Yet to the woman looking out, Watching and waiting, no serenade, Love-song, or midnight roundelay Said what that whistle seemed to say: "To my trust true, So, love, to you! Working or waiting, good-night!" it said.

Brisk young bagmen, tourists fine, Old commuters along the line, Brakemen and porters glanced ahead, Smiled as the signal, sharp, intense, Pierced through the shadows of Providence: "Nothing amiss-- Nothing!--it is Only Guild calling his wife," they said.

Summer and winter the old refrain Rang o'er the billows of ripening grain, Pierced through the budding boughs o'erhead, Flew down the track when the red leaves burned Like living coals from the engine spurned; Sang as it flew, "To our trust true, First of all, duty. Good-night!" it said.

And then, one night, it was heard no more From Stonington over Rhode Island shore, And the folk in Providence smiled and said As they turned in their beds, "The engineer Has once forgotten his midnight cheer." ONE only knew, To his trust true, Guild lay under his engine, dead.

ASPIRING MISS DE LAINE

(A CHEMICAL NARRATIVE)

Certain facts which serve to explain The physical charms of Miss Addie De Laine, Who, as the common reports obtain, Surpassed in complexion the lily and rose; With a very sweet mouth and a retrousse nose; A figure like Hebe's, or that which revolves In a milliner's window, and partially solves That question which mentor and moralist pains, If grace may exist minus feeling or brains.

Of course the young lady had beaux by the score, All that she wanted,--what girl could ask more? Lovers that sighed and lovers that swore, Lovers that danced and lovers that played, Men of profession, of leisure, and trade; But one, who was destined to take the high part Of holding that mythical treasure, her heart,-- This lover, the wonder and envy of town, Was a practicing chemist, a fellow called Brown.

I might here remark that 'twas doubted by many, In regard to the heart, if Miss Addie had any; But no one could look in that eloquent face, With its exquisite outline and features of grace, And mark, through the transparent skin, how the tide Ebbed and flowed at the impulse of passion or pride,-- None could look, who believed in the blood's circulation As argued by Harvey, but saw confirmation That here, at least, Nature had triumphed o'er art, And as far as complexion went she had a heart.

But this par parenthesis. Brown was the man Preferred of all others to carry her fan, Hook her glove, drape her shawl, and do all that a belle May demand of the lover she wants to treat well. Folks wondered and stared that a fellow called Brown-- Abstracted and solemn, in manner a clown, Ill dressed, with a lingering smell of the shop-- Should appear as her escort at party or hop. Some swore he had cooked up some villainous charm, Or love philter, not in the regular Pharm- Acopoeia, and thus, from pure malice prepense, Had bewitched and bamboozled the young lady's sense; Others thought, with more reason, the secret to lie In a magical wash or indelible dye; While Society, with its censorious eye And judgment impartial, stood ready to damn What wasn't improper as being a sham.

For a fortnight the townfolk had all been agog With a party, the finest the season had seen, To be given in honor of Miss Pollywog, Who was just coming out as a belle of sixteen. The guests were invited; but one night before A carriage drew up at the modest back door Of Brown's lab'ratory, and, full in the glare Of a big purple bottle, some closely veiled fair Alighted and entered: to make matters plain, Spite of veils and disguises, 'twas Addie De Laine.

As a bower for true love, 'twas hardly the one That a lady would choose to be wooed in or won: No odor of rose or sweet jessamine's sigh Breathed a fragrance to hallow their pledge of troth by, Nor the balm that exhales from the odorous thyme; But the gaseous effusions of chloride of lime, And salts, which your chemist delights to explain As the base of the smell of the rose and the drain. Think of this, O ye lovers of sweetness! and know What you smell when you snuff up Lubin or Pinaud.

I pass by the greetings, the transports and bliss, Which of course duly followed a meeting like this, And come down to business,--for such the intent Of the lady who now o'er the crucible leant, In the glow of a furnace of carbon and lime, Like a fairy called up in the new pantomime,-- And give but her words, as she coyly looked down In reply to the questioning glances of Brown: "I am taking the drops, and am using the paste, And the little white powders that had a sweet taste, Which you told me would brighten the glance of my eye, And the depilatory, and also the dye, And I'm charmed with the trial; and now, my dear Brown, I have one other favor,--now, ducky, don't frown,-- Only one, for a chemist and genius like you But a trifle, and one you can easily do. Now listen: to-morrow, you know, is the night Of the birthday soiree of that Pollywog fright; And I'm to be there, and the dress I shall wear Is TOO lovely; but"-- "But what then, ma chere?" Said Brown, as the lady came to a full stop, And glanced round the shelves of the little back shop. "Well, I want--I want something to fill out the skirt To the proper dimensions, without being girt In a stiff crinoline, or caged in a hoop That shows through one's skirt like the bars of a coop; Something light, that a lady may waltz in, or polk, With a freedom that none but you masculine folk Ever know. For, however poor woman aspires, She's always bound down to the earth by these wires. Are you listening? Nonsense! don't stare like a spoon, Idiotic; some light thing, and spacious, and soon-- Something like--well, in fact--something like a balloon!"

Here she paused; and here Brown, overcome by surprise, Gave a doubting assent with still wondering eyes, And the lady departed. But just at the door Something happened,--'tis true, it had happened before In this sanctum of science,--a sibilant sound, Like some element just from its trammels unbound, Or two substances that their affinities found.

The night of the anxiously looked for soiree Had come, with its fair ones in gorgeous array; With the rattle of wheels and the tinkle of bells, And the "How do ye do's" and the "Hope you are well's;" And the crush in the passage, and last lingering look You give as you hang your best hat on the hook; The rush of hot air as the door opens wide; And your entry,--that blending of self-possessed pride And humility shown in your perfect-bred stare At the folk, as if wondering how they got there; With other tricks worthy of Vanity Fair. Meanwhile, the safe topic, the beat of the room, Already was losing its freshness and bloom; Young people were yawning, and wondering when The dance would come off; and why didn't it then: When a vague expectation was thrilling the crowd, Lo! the door swung its hinges with utterance proud! And Pompey announced, with a trumpet-like strain, The entrance of Brown and Miss Addie De Laine.

She entered; but oh! how imperfect the verb To express to the senses her movement superb! To say that she "sailed in" more clearly might tell Her grace in its buoyant and billowy swell. Her robe was a vague circumambient space, With shadowy boundaries made of point-lace; The rest was but guesswork, and well might defy The power of critical feminine eye To define or describe: 'twere as futile to try The gossamer web of the cirrus to trace, Floating far in the blue of a warm summer sky.

'Midst the humming of praises and glances of beaux That greet our fair maiden wherever she goes, Brown slipped like a shadow, grim, silent, and black, With a look of anxiety, close in her track. Once he whispered aside in her delicate ear A sentence of warning,--it might be of fear: "Don't stand in a draught, if you value your life." (Nothing more,--such advice might be given your wife Or your sweetheart, in times of bronchitis and cough, Without mystery, romance, or frivolous scoff.) But hark to the music; the dance has begun. The closely draped windows wide open are flung; The notes of the piccolo, joyous and light, Like bubbles burst forth on the warm summer night. Round about go the dancers; in circles they fly; Trip, trip, go their feet as their skirts eddy by; And swifter and lighter, but somewhat too plain, Whisks the fair circumvolving Miss Addie De Laine. Taglioni and Cerito well might have pined For the vigor and ease that her movements combined; E'en Rigelboche never flung higher her robe In the naughtiest city that's known on the globe. 'Twas amazing, 'twas scandalous; lost in surprise, Some opened their mouths, and a few shut their eyes.

But hark! At the moment Miss Addie De Laine, Circling round at the outer edge of an ellipse Which brought her fair form to the window again, From the arms of her partner incautiously slips! And a shriek fills the air, and the music is still, And the crowd gather round where her partner forlorn Still frenziedly points from the wide window-sill Into space and the night; for Miss Addie was gone! Gone like the bubble that bursts in the sun; Gone like the grain when the reaper is done; Gone like the dew on the fresh morning grass; Gone without parting farewell; and alas! Gone with a flavor of hydrogen gas!

When the weather is pleasant, you frequently meet A white-headed man slowly pacing the street; His trembling hand shading his lack-lustre eye, Half blind with continually scanning the sky. Rumor points him as some astronomical sage, Re-perusing by day the celestial page; But the reader, sagacious, will recognize Brown, Trying vainly to conjure his lost sweetheart down, And learn the stern moral this story must teach, That Genius may lift its love out of its reach.

A LEGEND OF COLOGNE

Above the bones St. Ursula owns, And those of the virgins she chaperons; Above the boats, And the bridge that floats, And the Rhine and the steamers' smoky throats; Above the chimneys and quaint-tiled roofs, Above the clatter of wheels and hoofs; Above Newmarket's open space, Above that consecrated place Where the genuine bones of the Magi seen are, And the dozen shops of the real Farina; Higher than even old Hohestrasse, Whose houses threaten the timid passer,-- Above them all, Through scaffolds tall, And spires like delicate limbs in splinters, The great Cologne's Cathedral stones Climb through the storms of eight hundred winters.

Unfinished there, In high mid-air The towers halt like a broken prayer; Through years belated, Unconsummated, The hope of its architect quite frustrated. Its very youth They say, forsooth, With a quite improper purpose mated; And every stone With a curse of its own Instead of that sermon Shakespeare stated, Since the day its choir, Which all admire, By Cologne's Archbishop was consecrated.

Ah! THAT was a day, One well might say, To be marked with the largest, whitest stone To be found in the towers of all Cologne! Along the Rhine, From old Rheinstein, The people flowed like their own good wine. From Rudesheim, And Geisenheim, And every spot that is known to rhyme; From the famed Cat's Castle of St. Goarshausen, To the pictured roofs of Assmannshausen, And down the track, From quaint Schwalbach To the clustering tiles of Bacharach; From Bingen, hence To old Coblentz: From every castellated crag, Where the robber chieftains kept their "swag," The folk flowed in, and Ober-Cassel Shone with the pomp of knight and vassal; And pouring in from near and far, As the Rhine to its bosom draws the Ahr, Or takes the arm of the sober Mosel, So in Cologne, knight, squire, and losel, Choked up the city's gates with men From old St. Stephen to Zint Marjen.

What had they come to see? Ah me! I fear no glitter of pageantry, Nor sacred zeal For Church's weal, Nor faith in the virgins' bones to heal; Nor childlike trust in frank confession Drew these, who, dyed in deep transgression, Still in each nest On every crest Kept stolen goods in their possession; But only their gout For something new, More rare than the "roast" of a wandering Jew; Or--to be exact-- To see--in fact-- A Christian soul, in the very act Of being damned, secundum artem, By the devil, before a soul could part 'em.

For a rumor had flown Throughout Cologne That the church, in fact, was the devil's own; That its architect (Being long "suspect") Had confessed to the Bishop that he had wrecked Not only his OWN soul, but had lost The VERY FIRST CHRISTIAN SOUL that crossed The sacred threshold: and all, in fine, For that very beautiful design Of the wonderful choir They were pleased to admire. And really, he must be allowed to say-- To speak in a purely business way-- That, taking the ruling market prices Of souls and churches, in such a crisis It would be shown-- And his Grace must own-- It was really a BARGAIN for Cologne!

Such was the tale That turned cheeks pale With the thought that the enemy might prevail, And the church doors snap With a thunderclap On a Christian soul in that devil's trap. But a wiser few, Who thought that they knew Cologne's Archbishop, replied, "Pooh, pooh! Just watch him and wait, And as sure as fate, You'll find that the Bishop will give checkmate."

One here might note How the popular vote, As shown in all legends and anecdote, Declares that a breach Of trust to o'erreach The devil is something quite proper for each. And, really, if you Give the devil his due In spite of the proverb--it's something you'll rue. But to lie and deceive him, To use and to leave him, From Job up to Faust is the way to receive him, Though no one has heard It ever averred That the "Father of Lies" ever yet broke HIS word, But has left this position, In every tradition, To be taken alone by the "truth-loving" Christian! Bom! from the tower! It is the hour! The host pours in, in its pomp and power Of banners and pyx, And high crucifix, And crosiers and other processional sticks, And no end of Marys In quaint reliquaries, To gladden the souls of all true antiquaries; And an Osculum Pacis (A myth to the masses Who trusted their bones more to mail and cuirasses)-- All borne by the throng Who are marching along To the square of the Dom with processional song, With the flaring of dips, And bending of hips, And the chanting of hundred perfunctory lips; And some good little boys Who had come up from Neuss And the Quirinuskirche to show off their voice: All march to the square Of the great Dom, and there File right and left, leaving alone and quite bare A covered sedan, Containing--so ran The rumor--the victim to take off the ban.

They have left it alone, They have sprinkled each stone Of the porch with a sanctified Eau de Cologne, Guaranteed in this case To disguise every trace Of a sulphurous presence in that sacred place. Two Carmelites stand On the right and left hand Of the covered sedan chair, to wait the command Of the prelate to throw Up the cover and show The form of the victim in terror below. There's a pause and a prayer, Then the signal, and there-- Is a WOMAN!--by all that is good and is fair!

A woman! and known To them all--one must own TOO WELL KNOWN to the many, to-day to be shown As a martyr, or e'en As a Christian! A queen Of pleasance and revel, of glitter and sheen; So bad that the worst Of Cologne spake up first, And declared 'twas an outrage to suffer one curst, And already a fief Of the Satanic chief, To martyr herself for the Church's relief. But in vain fell their sneer On the mob, who I fear On the whole felt a strong disposition to cheer.

A woman! and there She stands in the glare Of the pitiless sun and their pitying stare,-- A woman still young, With garments that clung To a figure, though wasted with passion and wrung With remorse and despair, Yet still passing fair, With jewels and gold in her dark shining hair, And cheeks that are faint 'Neath her dyes and her paint. A woman most surely--but hardly a saint!

She moves. She has gone From their pity and scorn; She has mounted alone The first step of stone, And the high swinging doors she wide open has thrown, Then pauses and turns, As the altar blaze burns On her cheeks, and with one sudden gesture she spurns Archbishop and Prior, Knight, ladye, and friar, And her voice rings out high from the vault of the choir.

"O men of Cologne! What I WAS ye have known; What I AM, as I stand here, One knoweth alone. If it be but His will I shall pass from Him still, Lost, curst, and degraded, I reckon no ill; If still by that sign Of His anger divine One soul shall be saved, He hath blessed more than mine. O men of Cologne! Stand forth, if ye own A faith like to this, or more fit to atone, And take ye my place, And God give you grace To stand and confront Him, like me, face to face!"

She paused. Yet aloof They all stand. No reproof Breaks the silence that fills the celestial roof. One instant--no more-- She halts at the door, Then enters!... A flood from the roof to the floor Fills the church rosy red. She is gone! But instead, Who is this leaning forward with glorified head And hands stretched to save? Sure this is no slave Of the Powers of Darkness, with aspect so brave!

They press to the door, But too late! All is o'er. Naught remains but a woman's form prone on the floor; But they still see a trace Of that glow in her face That they saw in the light of the altar's high blaze On the image that stands With the babe in its hands Enshrined in the churches of all Christian lands.

A Te Deum sung, A censer high swung, With praise, benediction, and incense wide-flung, Proclaim that the CURSE IS REMOVED--and no worse Is the Dom for the trial--in fact, the REVERSE; For instead of their losing A soul in abusing The Evil One's faith, they gained one of his choosing.

Thus the legend is told: You will find in the old Vaulted aisles of the Dom, stiff in marble or cold In iron and brass, In gown and cuirass, The knights, priests, and bishops who came to that Mass; And high o'er the rest, With her babe at her breast, The image of Mary Madonna the blest. But you look round in vain, On each high pictured pane, For the woman most worthy to walk in her train.

Yet, standing to-day O'er the dust and the clay, 'Midst the ghosts of a life that has long passed away, With the slow-sinking sun Looking softly upon That stained-glass procession, I scarce miss the one That it does not reveal, For I know and I feel That these are but shadows--the woman was real!

THE TALE OF A PONY

Name of my heroine, simply "Rose;" Surname, tolerable only in prose; Habitat, Paris,--that is where She resided for change of air; Aetat twenty; complexion fair; Rich, good looking, and debonnaire; Smarter than Jersey lightning. There! That's her photograph, done with care.

In Paris, whatever they do besides, EVERY LADY IN FULL DRESS RIDES! Moire antiques you never meet Sweeping the filth of a dirty street But every woman's claim to ton Depends upon The team she drives, whether phaeton, Landau, or britzka. Hence it's plain That Rose, who was of her toilet vain, Should have a team that ought to be Equal to any in all Paris!

"Bring forth the horse!" The commissaire Bowed, and brought Miss Rose a pair Leading an equipage rich and rare. Why doth that lovely lady stare? Why? The tail of the off gray mare Is bobbed, by all that's good and fair! Like the shaving-brushes that soldiers wear, Scarcely showing as much back hair As Tam O'Shanter's "Meg,"--and there, Lord knows, she'd little enough to spare.

That stare and frown the Frenchman knew, But did as well-bred Frenchmen do: Raised his shoulders above his crown, Joined his thumbs with the fingers down, And said, "Ah, Heaven!"--then, "Mademoiselle, Delay one minute, and all is well!" He went--returned; by what good chance These things are managed so well in France I cannot say, but he made the sale, And the bob-tailed mare had a flowing tail.

All that is false in this world below Betrays itself in a love of show; Indignant Nature hides her lash In the purple-black of a dyed mustache; The shallowest fop will trip in French, The would-be critic will misquote Trench; In short, you're always sure to detect A sham in the things folks most affect; Bean-pods are noisiest when dry, And you always wink with your weakest eye: And that's the reason the old gray mare Forever had her tail in the air, With flourishes beyond compare, Though every whisk Incurred the risk Of leaving that sensitive region bare. She did some things that you couldn't but feel She wouldn't have done had her tail been real.

Champs Elysees: time, past five. There go the carriages,--look alive! Everything that man can drive, Or his inventive skill contrive,-- Yankee buggy or English "chay," Dog-cart, droschky, and smart coupe, A desobligeante quite bulky (French idea of a Yankee sulky); Band in the distance playing a march, Footman standing stiff as starch; Savans, lorettes, deputies, Arch- Bishops, and there together range Sous-lieutenants and cent-gardes (strange Way these soldier-chaps make change), Mixed with black-eyed Polish dames, With unpronounceable awful names; Laces tremble and ribbons flout, Coachmen wrangle and gendarmes shout-- Bless us! what is the row about? Ah! here comes Rosy's new turnout! Smart! You bet your life 'twas that! Nifty! (short for magnificat). Mulberry panels,--heraldic spread,-- Ebony wheels picked out with red, And two gray mares that were thoroughbred: No wonder that every dandy's head Was turned by the turnout,--and 'twas said That Caskowhisky (friend of the Czar), A very good whip (as Russians are), Was tied to Rosy's triumphal car, Entranced, the reader will understand, By "ribbons" that graced her head and hand.

Alas! the hour you think would crown Your highest wishes should let you down! Or Fate should turn, by your own mischance, Your victor's car to an ambulance, From cloudless heavens her lightnings glance! (And these things happen, even in France.) And so Miss Rose, as she trotted by, The cynosure of every eye, Saw to her horror the off mare shy, Flourish her tail so exceedingly high That, disregarding the closest tie, And without giving a reason why, She flung that tail so free and frisky Off in the face of Caskowhisky.

Excuses, blushes, smiles: in fine, End of the pony's tail, and mine!

ON A CONE OF THE BIG TREES

(SEQUOIA GIGANTEA)

Brown foundling of the Western wood, Babe of primeval wildernesses! Long on my table thou hast stood Encounters strange and rude caresses; Perchance contented with thy lot, Surroundings new, and curious faces, As though ten centuries were not Imprisoned in thy shining cases.

Thou bring'st me back the halcyon days Of grateful rest, the week of leisure, The journey lapped in autumn haze, The sweet fatigue that seemed a pleasure, The morning ride, the noonday halt, The blazing slopes, the red dust rising, And then the dim, brown, columned vault, With its cool, damp, sepulchral spicing.

Once more I see the rocking masts That scrape the sky, their only tenant The jay-bird, that in frolic casts From some high yard his broad blue pennant. I see the Indian files that keep Their places in the dusty heather, Their red trunks standing ankle-deep In moccasins of rusty leather.

I see all this, and marvel much That thou, sweet woodland waif, art able To keep the company of such As throng thy friend's--the poet's--table: The latest spawn the press hath cast,-- The "modern popes," "the later Byrons,"-- Why, e'en the best may not outlast Thy poor relation--Sempervirens.

Thy sire saw the light that shone On Mohammed's uplifted crescent, On many a royal gilded throne And deed forgotten in the present; He saw the age of sacred trees And Druid groves and mystic larches; And saw from forest domes like these The builder bring his Gothic arches.

And must thou, foundling, still forego Thy heritage and high ambition, To lie full lowly and full low, Adjusted to thy new condition? Not hidden in the drifted snows, But under ink-drops idly spattered, And leaves ephemeral as those That on thy woodland tomb were scattered?

Yet lie thou there, O friend! and speak The moral of thy simple story: Though life is all that thou dost seek, And age alone thy crown of glory, Not thine the only germs that fail The purpose of their high creation, If their poor tenements avail For worldly show and ostentation.

LONE MOUNTAIN

(CEMETERY, SAN FRANCISCO)

This is that hill of awe That Persian Sindbad saw,-- The mount magnetic; And on its seaward face, Scattered along its base, The wrecks prophetic.

Here come the argosies Blown by each idle breeze, To and fro shifting; Yet to the hill of Fate All drawing, soon or late,-- Day by day drifting;

Drifting forever here Barks that for many a year Braved wind and weather; Shallops but yesterday Launched on yon shining bay,-- Drawn all together.

This is the end of all: Sun thyself by the wall, O poorer Hindbad! Envy not Sindbad's fame: Here come alike the same Hindbad and Sindbad.

ALNASCHAR

Here's yer toy balloons! All sizes! Twenty cents for that. It rises Jest as quick as that 'ere, Miss, Twice as big. Ye see it is Some more fancy. Make it square Fifty for 'em both. That's fair.

That's the sixth I've sold since noon. Trade's reviving. Just as soon As this lot's worked off, I'll take Wholesale figgers. Make or break,-- That's my motto! Then I'll buy In some first-class lottery One half ticket, numbered right-- As I dreamed about last night.

That'll fetch it. Don't tell me! When a man's in luck, you see, All things help him. Every chance Hits him like an avalanche. Here's your toy balloons, Miss. Eh? You won't turn your face this way? Mebbe you'll be glad some day. With that clear ten thousand prize This 'yer trade I'll drop, and rise Into wholesale. No! I'll take Stocks in Wall Street. Make or break,-- That's my motto! With my luck, Where's the chance of being stuck? Call it sixty thousand, clear, Made in Wall Street in one year.

Sixty thousand! Umph! Let's see! Bond and mortgage'll do for me. Good! That gal that passed me by Scornful like--why, mebbe I Some day'll hold in pawn--why not?-- All her father's prop. She'll spot What's my little game, and see What I'm after's HER. He! he!

He! he! When she comes to sue-- Let's see! What's the thing to do? Kick her? No! There's the perliss! Sorter throw her off like this. Hello! Stop! Help! Murder! Hey! There's my whole stock got away, Kiting on the house-tops! Lost! All a poor man's fortin! Cost? Twenty dollars! Eh! What's this? Fifty cents! God bless ye, Miss!

THE TWO SHIPS

As I stand by the cross on the lone mountain's crest, Looking over the ultimate sea, In the gloom of the mountain a ship lies at rest, And one sails away from the lea: One spreads its white wings on a far-reaching track, With pennant and sheet flowing free; One hides in the shadow with sails laid aback,-- The ship that is waiting for me!

But lo! in the distance the clouds break away, The Gate's glowing portals I see; And I hear from the outgoing ship in the bay The song of the sailors in glee. So I think of the luminous footprints that bore The comfort o'er dark Galilee, And wait for the signal to go to the shore, To the ship that is waiting for me.

ADDRESS

(OPENING OF THE CALIFORNIA THEATRE, SAN FRANCISCO, JANUARY 19, 1870)

Brief words, when actions wait, are well: The prompter's hand is on his bell; The coming heroes, lovers, kings, Are idly lounging at the wings; Behind the curtain's mystic fold The glowing future lies unrolled; And yet, one moment for the Past, One retrospect,--the first and last.

"The world's a stage," the Master said. To-night a mightier truth is read: Not in the shifting canvas screen, The flash of gas or tinsel sheen; Not in the skill whose signal calls From empty boards baronial halls; But, fronting sea and curving bay, Behold the players and the play.

Ah, friends! beneath your real skies The actor's short-lived triumph dies: On that broad stage of empire won, Whose footlights were the setting sun, Whose flats a distant background rose In trackless peaks of endless snows; Here genius bows, and talent waits To copy that but One creates.

Your shifting scenes: the league of sand, An avenue by ocean spanned; The narrow beach of straggling tents, A mile of stately monuments; Your standard, lo! a flag unfurled, Whose clinging folds clasp half the world,-- This is your drama, built on facts, With "twenty years between the acts."

One moment more: if here we raise The oft-sung hymn of local praise, Before the curtain facts must sway; HERE waits the moral of your play. Glassed in the poet's thought, you view What money can, yet cannot do; The faith that soars, the deeds that shine, Above the gold that builds the shrine.

And oh! when others take our place, And Earth's green curtain hides our face, Ere on the stage, so silent now, The last new hero makes his bow: So may our deeds, recalled once more In Memory's sweet but brief encore, Down all the circling ages run, With the world's plaudit of "Well done!"

DOLLY VARDEN

Dear Dolly! who does not recall The thrilling page that pictured all Those charms that held our sense in thrall Just as the artist caught her,-- As down that English lane she tripped, In bowered chintz, hat sideways tipped, Trim-bodiced, bright-eyed, roguish-lipped,-- The locksmith's pretty daughter?

Sweet fragment of the Master's art! O simple faith! O rustic heart! O maid that hath no counterpart In life's dry, dog-eared pages! Where shall we find thy like? Ah, stay! Methinks I saw her yesterday In chintz that flowered, as one might say, Perennial for ages.

Her father's modest cot was stone, Five stories high; in style and tone Composite, and, I frankly own, Within its walls revealing Some certain novel, strange ideas: A Gothic door with Roman piers, And floors removed some thousand years, From their Pompeian ceiling.

The small salon where she received Was Louis Quatorze, and relieved By Chinese cabinets, conceived Grotesquely by the heathen; The sofas were a classic sight,-- The Roman bench (sedilia hight); The chairs were French in gold and white, And one Elizabethan.

And she, the goddess of that shrine, Two ringed fingers placed in mine,-- The stones were many carats fine, And of the purest water,-- Then dropped a curtsy, far enough To fairly fill her cretonne puff And show the petticoat's rich stuff That her fond parent bought her.

Her speech was simple as her dress,-- Not French the more, but English less, She loved; yet sometimes, I confess, I scarce could comprehend her. Her manners were quite far from shy. There was a quiet in her eye Appalling to the Hugh who'd try With rudeness to offend her.

"But whence," I cried, "this masquerade? Some figure for to-night's charade, A Watteau shepherdess or maid?" She smiled and begged my pardon: "Why, surely you must know the name,-- That woman who was Shakespeare's flame Or Byron's,--well, it's all the same: Why, Lord! I'm Dolly Varden!"

TELEMACHUS VERSUS MENTOR

Don't mind me, I beg you, old fellow,--I'll do very well here alone; You must not be kept from your "German" because I've dropped in like a stone. Leave all ceremony behind you, leave all thought of aught but yourself; And leave, if you like, the Madeira, and a dozen cigars on the shelf.

As for me, you will say to your hostess--well, I scarcely need give you a cue. Chant my praise! All will list to Apollo, though Mercury pipe to a few. Say just what you please, my dear boy; there's more eloquence lies in youth's rash Outspoken heart-impulse than ever growled under this grizzling mustache.

Go, don the dress coat of our tyrant,--youth's panoplied armor for fight,-- And tie the white neckcloth that rumples, like pleasure, and lasts but a night; And pray the Nine Gods to avert you what time the Three Sisters shall frown, And you'll lose your high-comedy figure, and sit more at ease in your gown.

He's off! There's his foot on the staircase. By Jove, what a bound! Really now Did I ever leap like this springald, with Love's chaplet green on my brow? Was I such an ass? No, I fancy. Indeed, I remember quite plain A gravity mixed with my transports, a cheerfulness softened my pain.

He's gone! There's the slam of his cab door, there's the clatter of hoofs and the wheels; And while he the light toe is tripping, in this armchair I'll tilt up my heels. He's gone, and for what? For a tremor from a waist like a teetotum spun; For a rosebud that's crumpled by many before it is gathered by one.

Is there naught in the halo of youth but the glow of a passionate race--'Midst the cheers and applause of a crowd--to the goal of a beautiful face? A race that is not to the swift, a prize that no merits enforce, But is won by some faineant youth, who shall simply walk over the course?

Poor boy! shall I shock his conceit? When he talks of her cheek's loveliness, Shall I say 'twas the air of the room, and was due to carbonic excess? That when waltzing she drooped on his breast, and the veins of her eyelids grew dim, 'Twas oxygen's absence she felt, but never the presence of him?

Shall I tell him first love is a fraud, a weakling that's strangled in birth, Recalled with perfunctory tears, but lost in unsanctified mirth? Or shall I go bid him believe in all womankind's charm, and forget In the light ringing laugh of the world the rattlesnake's gay castanet?

Shall I tear out a leaf from my heart, from that book that forever is shut On the past? Shall I speak of my first love--Augusta--my Lalage? But I forget. Was it really Augusta? No. 'Twas Lucy! No. Mary! No. Di! Never mind! they were all first and faithless, and yet--I've forgotten just why.

No, no! Let him dream on and ever. Alas! he will waken too soon; And it doesn't look well for October to always be preaching at June. Poor boy! All his fond foolish trophies pinned yonder--a bow from HER hair, A few billets-doux, invitations, and--what's this? My name, I declare!

Humph! "You'll come, for I've got you a prize, with beauty and money no end: You know her, I think; 'twas on dit she once was engaged to your friend; But she says that's all over." Ah, is it? Sweet Ethel! incomparable maid! Or--what if the thing were a trick?--this letter so freely displayed!--

My opportune presence! No! nonsense! Will nobody answer the bell? Call a cab! Half past ten. Not too late yet. Oh, Ethel! Why don't you go? Well? "Master said you would wait"-- Hang your master! "Have I ever a message to send?" Yes, tell him I've gone to the German to dance with the friend of his friend.

WHAT THE WOLF REALLY SAID TO LITTLE RED RIDING-HOOD

Wondering maiden, so puzzled and fair, Why dost thou murmur and ponder and stare? "Why are my eyelids so open and wild?" Only the better to see with, my child! Only the better and clearer to view Cheeks that are rosy and eyes that are blue.

Dost thou still wonder, and ask why these arms Fill thy soft bosom with tender alarms, Swaying so wickedly? Are they misplaced Clasping or shielding some delicate waist? Hands whose coarse sinews may fill you with fear Only the better protect you, my dear!

Little Red Riding-Hood, when in the street, Why do I press your small hand when we meet? Why, when you timidly offered your cheek, Why did I sigh, and why didn't I speak? Why, well: you see--if the truth must appear-- I'm not your grandmother, Riding-Hood, dear!

HALF AN HOUR BEFORE SUPPER

"So she's here, your unknown Dulcinea, the lady you met on the train, And you really believe she would know you if you were to meet her again?"

"Of course," he replied, "she would know me; there never was womankind yet Forgot the effect she inspired. She excuses, but does not forget."

"Then you told her your love?" asked the elder. The younger looked up with a smile: "I sat by her side half an hour--what else was I doing the while?

"What, sit by the side of a woman as fair as the sun in the sky, And look somewhere else lest the dazzle flash back from your own to her eye?

"No, I hold that the speech of the tongue be as frank and as bold as the look, And I held up herself to herself,--that was more than she got from her book."

"Young blood!" laughed the elder; "no doubt you are voicing the mode of To-Day: But then we old fogies at least gave the lady some chance for delay.

"There's my wife (you must know),--we first met on the journey from Florence to Rome: It took me three weeks to discover who was she and where was her home;

"Three more to be duly presented; three more ere I saw her again; And a year ere my romance BEGAN where yours ended that day on the train."

"Oh, that was the style of the stage-coach; we travel to-day by express; Forty miles to the hour," he answered, "won't admit of a passion that's less."

"But what if you make a mistake?" quoth the elder. The younger half sighed. "What happens when signals are wrong or switches misplaced?" he replied.

"Very well, I must bow to your wisdom," the elder returned, "but submit Your chances of winning this woman your boldness has bettered no whit.

"Why, you do not at best know her name. And what if I try your ideal With something, if not quite so fair, at least more en regle and real?

"Let me find you a partner. Nay, come, I insist--you shall follow-- this way. My dear, will you not add your grace to entreat Mr. Rapid to stay?

"My wife, Mr. Rapid-- Eh, what! Why, he's gone--yet he said he would come. How rude! I don't wonder, my dear, you are properly crimson and dumb!"

WHAT THE BULLET SANG

O joy of creation To be! O rapture to fly And be free! Be the battle lost or won, Though its smoke shall hide the sun, I shall find my love,--the one Born for me!

I shall know him where he stands, All alone, With the power in his hands Not o'erthrown; I shall know him by his face, By his godlike front and grace; I shall hold him for a space, All my own!

It is he--O my love! So bold! It is I--all thy love Foretold! It is I. O love! what bliss! Dost thou answer to my kiss? O sweetheart! what is this Lieth there so cold?

THE OLD CAMP-FIRE

Now shift the blanket pad before your saddle back you fling, And draw your cinch up tighter till the sweat drops from the ring: We've a dozen miles to cover ere we reach the next divide. Our limbs are stiffer now than when we first set out to ride, And worse, the horses know it, and feel the leg-grip tire, Since in the days when, long ago, we sought the old camp-fire.

Yes, twenty years! Lord! how we'd scent its incense down the trail, Through balm of bay and spice of spruce, when eye and ear would fail, And worn and faint from useless quest we crept, like this, to rest, Or, flushed with luck and youthful hope, we rode, like this, abreast. Ay! straighten up, old friend, and let the mustang think he's nigher, Through looser rein and stirrup strain, the welcome old camp-fire.

You know the shout that would ring out before us down the glade, And start the blue jays like a flight of arrows through the shade, And sift the thin pine needles down like slanting, shining rain, And send the squirrels scampering back to their holes again, Until we saw, blue-veiled and dim, or leaping like desire, That flame of twenty years ago, which lit the old camp-fire.

And then that rest on Nature's breast, when talk had dropped, and slow The night wind went from tree to tree with challenge soft and low! We lay on lazy elbows propped, or stood to stir the flame, Till up the soaring redwood's shaft our shadows danced and came, As if to draw us with the sparks, high o'er its unseen spire, To the five stars that kept their ward above the old camp-fire,--

Those picket stars whose tranquil watch half soothed, half shamed our sleep. What recked we then what beasts or men around might lurk or creep? We lay and heard with listless ears the far-off panther's cry, The near coyote's snarling snap, the grizzly's deep-drawn sigh, The brown bear's blundering human tread, the gray wolves' yelping choir Beyond the magic circle drawn around the old camp-fire.

And then that morn! Was ever morn so filled with all things new? The light that fell through long brown aisles from out the kindling blue, The creak and yawn of stretching boughs, the jay-bird's early call, The rat-tat-tat of woodpecker that waked the woodland hall, The fainter stir of lower life in fern and brake and brier, Till flashing leaped the torch of Day from last night's old camp-fire!

Well, well! we'll see it once again; we should be near it now; It's scarce a mile to where the trail strikes off to skirt the slough, And then the dip to Indian Spring, the wooded rise, and--strange! Yet here should stand the blasted pine that marked our farther range; And here--what's this? A ragged swab of ruts and stumps and mire! Sure this is not the sacred grove that hid the old camp-fire!

Yet here's the "blaze" I cut myself, and there's the stumbling ledge, With quartz "outcrop" that lay atop, now leveled to its edge, And mounds of moss-grown stumps beside the woodman's rotting chips, And gashes in the hillside, that gape with dumb red lips. And yet above the shattered wreck and ruin, curling higher-- Ah yes!--still lifts the smoke that marked the welcome old camp-fire!

Perhaps some friend of twenty years still lingers there to raise To weary hearts and tired eyes that beacon of old days. Perhaps but stay; 'tis gone! and yet once more it lifts as though To meet our tardy blundering steps, and seems to MOVE, and lo! Whirls by us in a rush of sound,--the vanished funeral pyre Of hopes and fears that twenty years burned in the old camp-fire!

For see, beyond the prospect spreads, with chimney, spire, and roof,-- Two iron bands across the trail clank to our mustang's hoof; Above them leap two blackened threads from limb-lopped tree to tree, To where the whitewashed station speeds its message to the sea. Rein in! Rein in! The quest is o'er. The goal of our desire Is but the train whose track has lain across the old camp-fire!

THE STATION-MASTER OF LONE PRAIRIE

An empty bench, a sky of grayest etching, A bare, bleak shed in blackest silhouette, Twelve years of platform, and before them stretching Twelve miles of prairie glimmering through the wet.

North, south, east, west,--the same dull gray persistence, The tattered vapors of a vanished train, The narrowing rails that meet to pierce the distance, Or break the columns of the far-off rain.

Naught but myself; nor form nor figure breaking The long hushed level and stark shining waste; Nothing that moves to fill the vision aching, When the last shadow fled in sullen haste.

Nothing beyond. Ah yes! From out the station A stiff, gaunt figure thrown against the sky, Beckoning me with some wooden salutation Caught from his signals as the train flashed by;

Yielding me place beside him with dumb gesture Born of that reticence of sky and air. We sit apart, yet wrapped in that one vesture Of silence, sadness, and unspoken care:

Each following his own thought,--around us darkening The rain-washed boundaries and stretching track,-- Each following those dim parallels and hearkening For long-lost voices that will not come back.

Until, unasked,--I knew not why or wherefore,-- He yielded, bit by bit, his dreary past, Like gathered clouds that seemed to thicken there for Some dull down-dropping of their care at last.

Long had he lived there. As a boy had started From the stacked corn the Indian's painted face; Heard the wolves' howl the wearying waste that parted His father's hut from the last camping-place.

Nature had mocked him: thrice had claimed the reaping, With scythe of fire, of lands she once had sown; Sent the tornado, round his hearthstone heaping Rafters, dead faces that were like his own.

Then came the War Time. When its shadow beckoned He had walked dumbly where the flag had led Through swamp and fen,--unknown, unpraised, unreckoned,-- To famine, fever, and a prison bed.

Till the storm passed, and the slow tide returning Cast him, a wreck, beneath his native sky; Here, at his watch, gave him the chance of earning Scant means to live--who won the right to die.

All this I heard--or seemed to hear--half blending With the low murmur of the coming breeze, The call of some lost bird, and the unending And tireless sobbing of those grassy seas.

Until at last the spell of desolation Broke with a trembling star and far-off cry. The coming train! I glanced around the station, All was as empty as the upper sky!

Naught but myself; nor form nor figure waking The long hushed level and stark shining waste; Naught but myself, that cry, and the dull shaking Of wheel and axle, stopped in breathless haste!

"Now, then--look sharp! Eh, what? The Station-Master? THAR'S NONE! We stopped here of our own accord. The man got killed in that down-train disaster This time last evening. Right there! All aboard!"

THE MISSION BELLS OF MONTEREY

O bells that rang, O bells that sang Above the martyrs' wilderness, Till from that reddened coast-line sprang The Gospel seed to cheer and bless, What are your garnered sheaves to-day? O Mission bells! Eleison bells! O Mission bells of Monterey!

O bells that crash, O bells that clash Above the chimney-crowded plain, On wall and tower your voices dash, But never with the old refrain; In mart and temple gone astray! Ye dangle bells! Ye jangle bells! Ye wrangle bells of Monterey!

O bells that die, so far, so nigh, Come back once more across the sea; Not with the zealot's furious cry, Not with the creed's austerity; Come with His love alone to stay, O Mission bells! Eleison bells! O Mission bells of Monterey!

* This poem was set to music by Monsieur Charles Gounod.

"CROTALUS"

(RATTLESNAKE BAR, SIERRAS)

No life in earth, or air, or sky; The sunbeams, broken silently, On the bared rocks around me lie,--

Cold rocks with half-warmed lichens scarred, And scales of moss; and scarce a yard Away, one long strip, yellow-barred.

Lost in a cleft! 'Tis but a stride To reach it, thrust its roots aside, And lift it on thy stick astride!

Yet stay! That moment is thy grace! For round thee, thrilling air and space, A chattering terror fills the place!

A sound as of dry bones that stir In the dead Valley! By yon fir The locust stops its noonday whir!

The wild bird hears; smote with the sound, As if by bullet brought to ground, On broken wing, dips, wheeling round!

The hare, transfixed, with trembling lip, Halts, breathless, on pulsating hip, And palsied tread, and heels that slip.

Enough, old friend!--'tis thou. Forget My heedless foot, nor longer fret The peace with thy grim castanet!

I know thee! Yes! Thou mayst forego That lifted crest; the measured blow Beyond which thy pride scorns to go,

Or yet retract! For me no spell Lights those slit orbs, where, some think, dwell Machicolated fires of hell!

I only know thee humble, bold, Haughty, with miseries untold, And the old Curse that left thee cold,

And drove thee ever to the sun, On blistering rocks; nor made thee shun Our cabin's hearth, when day was done,

And the spent ashes warmed thee best; We knew thee,--silent, joyless guest Of our rude ingle. E'en thy quest

Of the rare milk-bowl seemed to be Naught but a brother's poverty, And Spartan taste that kept thee free

From lust and rapine. Thou! whose fame Searchest the grass with tongue of flame, Making all creatures seem thy game;

When the whole woods before thee run, Asked but--when all was said and done-- To lie, untrodden, in the sun!

ON WILLIAM FRANCIS BARTLETT

DEAD AT PITTSFIELD, MASS., 1876

O poor Romancer--thou whose printed page, Filled with rude speech and ruder forms of strife, Was given to heroes in whose vulgar rage No trace appears of gentler ways and life!--

Thou who wast wont of commoner clay to build Some rough Achilles or some Ajax tall; Thou whose free brush too oft was wont to gild Some single virtue till it dazzled all;--

What right hast thou beside this laureled bier Whereon all manhood lies--whereon the wreath Of Harvard rests, the civic crown, and here The starry flag, and sword and jeweled sheath?

Seest thou these hatchments? Knowest thou this blood Nourished the heroes of Colonial days-- Sent to the dim and savage-haunted wood Those sad-eyed Puritans with hymns of praise?

Look round thee! Everywhere is classic ground. There Greylock rears. Beside yon silver "Bowl" Great Hawthorne dwelt, and in its mirror found Those quaint, strange shapes that filled his poet's soul.

Still silent, Stranger? Thou who now and then Touched the too credulous ear with pathos, canst not speak? Hast lost thy ready skill of tongue and pen? What, Jester! Tears upon that painted cheek?

Pardon, good friends! I am not here to mar His laureled wreaths with this poor tinseled crown-- This man who taught me how 'twas better far To be the poem than to write it down.

I bring no lesson. Well have others preached This sword that dealt full many a gallant blow; I come once more to touch the hand that reached Its knightly gauntlet to the vanquished foe.

O pale Aristocrat, that liest there, So cold, so silent! Couldst thou not in grace Have borne with us still longer, and so spare The scorn we see in that proud, placid face?

"Hail and farewell!" So the proud Roman cried O'er his dead hero. "Hail," but not "farewell." With each high thought thou walkest side by side; We feel thee, touch thee, know who wrought the spell!

THE BIRDS OF CIRENCESTER

Did I ever tell you, my dears, the way That the birds of Cisseter--"Cisseter!" eh? Well "Ciren-cester"--one OUGHT to say, From "Castra," or "Caster," As your Latin master Will further explain to you some day; Though even the wisest err, And Shakespeare writes "Ci-cester," While every visitor Who doesn't say "Cissiter" Is in "Ciren-cester" considered astray.

A hundred miles from London town-- Where the river goes curving and broadening down From tree-top to spire, and spire to mast, Till it tumbles outright in the Channel at last-- A hundred miles from that flat foreshore That the Danes and the Northmen haunt no more-- There's a little cup in the Cotswold hills Which a spring in a meadow bubbles and fills, Spanned by a heron's wing--crossed by a stride-- Calm and untroubled by dreams of pride, Guiltless of Fame or ambition's aims, That is the source of the lordly Thames! Remark here again that custom contemns Both "Tames" and Thames--you must SAY "Tems!" But WHY? no matter!--from them you can see Cirencester's tall spires loom up o'er the lea.

A. D. Five Hundred and Fifty-two, The Saxon invaders--a terrible crew-- Had forced the lines of the Britons through; And Cirencester, half mud and thatch, Dry and crisp as a tinder match, Was fiercely beleaguered by foes, who'd catch At any device that could harry and rout The folk that so boldly were holding out.

For the streets of the town--as you'll see to-day-- Were twisted and curved in a curious way That kept the invaders still at bay; And the longest bolt that a Saxon drew Was stopped ere a dozen of yards it flew, By a turn in the street, and a law so true That even these robbers--of all laws scorners!-- Knew you couldn't shoot arrows AROUND street corners.

So they sat them down on a little knoll, And each man scratched his Saxon poll, And stared at the sky, where, clear and high, The birds of that summer went singing by, As if, in his glee, each motley jester Were mocking the foes of Cirencester, Till the jeering crow and the saucy linnet Seemed all to be saying: "Ah! you're not in it!"

High o'er their heads the mavis flew, And the "ouzel-cock so black of hue;" And the "throstle," with his "note so true" (You remember what Shakespeare says--HE knew); And the soaring lark, that kept dropping through Like a bucket spilling in wells of blue; And the merlin--seen on heraldic panes-- With legs as vague as the Queen of Spain's;

And the dashing swift that would ricochet From the tufts of grasses before them, yet-- Like bold Antaeus--would each time bring New life from the earth, barely touched by his wing; And the swallow and martlet that always knew The straightest way home. Here a Saxon churl drew His breath--tapped his forehead--an idea had got through!

So they brought them some nets, which straightway they filled With the swallows and martlets--the sweet birds who build In the houses of man--all that innocent guild Who sing at their labor on eaves and in thatch-- And they stuck on their feathers a rude lighted match Made of resin and tow. Then they let them all go To be free! As a child-like diversion? Ah, no! To work Cirencester's red ruin and woe.

For straight to each nest they flew, in wild quest Of their homes and their fledgelings--that they loved the best; And straighter than arrow of Saxon e'er sped They shot o'er the curving streets, high overhead, Bringing fire and terror to roof tree and bed, Till the town broke in flame, wherever they came, To the Briton's red ruin--the Saxon's red shame!

Yet they're all gone together! To-day you'll dig up From "mound" or from "barrow" some arrow or cup. Their fame is forgotten--their story is ended-- 'Neath the feet of the race they have mixed with and blended. But the birds are unchanged--the ouzel-cock sings, Still gold on his crest and still black on his wings; And the lark chants on high, as he mounts to the sky, Still brown in his coat and still dim in his eye; While the swallow or martlet is still a free nester In the eaves and the roofs of thrice-built Cirencester.

LINES TO A PORTRAIT, BY A SUPERIOR PERSON

When I bought you for a song, Years ago--Lord knows how long!-- I was struck--I may be wrong-- By your features, And--a something in your air That I couldn't quite compare To my other plain or fair Fellow creatures.

In your simple, oval frame You were not well known to fame, But to me--'twas all the same-- Whoe'er drew you; For your face I can't forget, Though I oftentimes regret That, somehow, I never yet Saw quite through you.

Yet each morning, when I rise, I go first to greet your eyes; And, in turn, YOU scrutinize My presentment. And when shades of evening fall, As you hang upon my wall, You're the last thing I recall With contentment.

It is weakness, yet I know That I never turned to go Anywhere, for weal or woe, But I lingered For one parting, thrilling flash From your eyes, to give that dash To the curl of my mustache, That I fingered.

If to some you may seem plain, And when people glance again Where you hang, their lips refrain. From confession; Yet they turn in stealth aside, And I note, they try to hide How much they are satisfied In expression.

Other faces I have seen; Other forms have come between; Other things I have, I ween, Done and dared for! But OUR ties they cannot sever, And, though I should say it never, You're the only one I ever Really cared for!

And you'll still be hanging there When we're both the worse for wear, And the silver's on my hair And off your backing; Yet my faith shall never pass In my dear old shaving-glass, Till my face and yours, alas! Both are lacking!

HER LAST LETTER

BEING A REPLY TO "HIS ANSWER"

June 4th! Do you know what that date means? June 4th! By this air and these pines! Well,--only you know how I hate scenes,-- These might be my very last lines! For perhaps, sir, you'll kindly remember-- If some OTHER things you've forgot-- That you last wrote the 4th of DECEMBER,-- Just six months ago I--from this spot;

From this spot, that you said was "the fairest For once being held in my thought." Now, really I call that the barest Of--well, I won't say what I ought! For here I am back from my "riches," My "triumphs," my "tours," and all that; And YOU'RE not to be found in the ditches Or temples of Poverty Flat!

From Paris we went for the season To London, when pa wired, "Stop." Mama says "his HEALTH" was the reason. (I've heard that some things took a "drop.") But she said if my patience I'd summon I could go back with him to the Flat-- Perhaps I was thinking of some one Who of me--well--was not thinking THAT!

Of course you will SAY that I "never Replied to the letter you wrote." That is just like a man! But, however, I read it--or how could I quote? And as to the stories you've heard (No, Don't tell me you haven't--I know!), You'll not believe one blessed word, Joe; But just whence they came, let them go!

And they came from Sade Lotski of Yolo, Whose father sold clothes on the Bar-- You called him Job-lotski, you know, Joe, And the boys said HER value was par. Well, we met her in Paris--just flaring With diamonds, and lost in a hat And she asked me "how Joseph was faring In his love-suit on Poverty Flat!"

She thought it would shame me! I met her With a look, Joe, that made her eyes drop; And I said that your "love-suit fared better Than any suit out of THEIR shop!" And I didn't blush THEN--as I'm doing To find myself here, all alone, And left, Joe, to do all the "sueing" To a lover that's certainly flown.

In this brand-new hotel, called "The Lily" (I wonder who gave it that name?) I really am feeling quite silly, To think I was once called the same; And I stare from its windows, and fancy I'm labeled to each passer-by. Ah! gone is the old necromancy, For nothing seems right to my eye.

On that hill there are stores that I knew not; There's a street--where I once lost my way; And the copse where you once tied my shoe-knot Is shamelessly open as day! And that bank by the spring--I once drank there, And you called the place Eden, you know; Now I'm banished like Eve--though the bank there Is belonging to "Adams and Co."

There's the rustle of silk on the sidewalk; Just now there passed by a tall hat; But there's gloom in this "boom" and this wild talk Of the "future" of Poverty Flat. There's a decorous chill in the air, Joe, Where once we were simple and free; And I hear they've been making a mayor, Joe, Of the man who shot Sandy McGee.

But there's still the "lap, lap" of the river; There's the song of the pines, deep and low. (How my longing for them made me quiver In the park that they call Fontainebleau!) There's the snow-peak that looked on our dances, And blushed when the morning said, "Go!" There's a lot that remains which one fancies-- But somehow there's never a Joe!

Perhaps, on the whole, it is better, For you might have been changed like the rest; Though it's strange that I'm trusting this letter To papa, just to have it addressed. He thinks he may find you, and really Seems kinder now I'm all alone. You might have been here, Joe, if merely To LOOK what I'm willing to OWN.

Well, well! that's all past; so good-night, Joe; Good-night to the river and Flat; Good-night to what's wrong and what's right, Joe; Good-night to the past, and all that-- To Harrison's barn, and its dancers; To the moon, and the white peak of snow; And good-night to the canyon that answers My "Joe!" with its echo of "No!"

P. S.

I've just got your note. You deceiver! How dared you--how COULD you? Oh, Joe! To think I've been kept a believer In things that were six months ago! And it's YOU'VE built this house, and the bank, too, And the mills, and the stores, and all that! And for everything changed I must thank YOU, Who have "struck it" on Poverty Flat!

How dared you get rich--you great stupid!-- Like papa, and some men that I know, Instead of just trusting to Cupid And to me for your money? Ah, Joe! Just to think you sent never a word, dear, Till you wrote to papa for consent! Now I know why they had me transferred here, And "the health of papa"--what THAT meant!

Now I know why they call this "The Lily;" Why the man who shot Sandy McGee You made mayor! 'Twas because--oh, you silly!-- He once "went down the middle" with me! I've been fooled to the top of my bent here, So come, and ask pardon--you know That you've still got to get MY consent, dear! And just think what that echo said--Joe!

V. PARODIES

BEFORE THE CURTAIN

Behind the footlights hangs the rusty baize, A trifle shabby in the upturned blaze Of flaring gas and curious eyes that gaze.

The stage, methinks, perhaps is none too wide, And hardly fit for royal Richard's stride, Or Falstaff's bulk, or Denmark's youthful pride.

Ah, well! no passion walks its humble boards; O'er it no king nor valiant Hector lords: The simplest skill is all its space affords.

The song and jest, the dance and trifling play, The local hit at follies of the day, The trick to pass an idle hour away,--

For these no trumpets that announce the Moor, No blast that makes the hero's welcome sure,-- A single fiddle in the overture!

TO THE PLIOCENE SKULL*

(A GEOLOGICAL ADDRESS)

"Speak, O man, less recent! Fragmentary fossil! Primal pioneer of pliocene formation, Hid in lowest drifts below the earliest stratum Of volcanic tufa!

"Older than the beasts, the oldest Palaeotherium; Older than the trees, the oldest Cryptogami; Older than the hills, those infantile eruptions Of earth's epidermis!

"Eo--Mio--Plio--whatsoe'er the 'cene' was That those vacant sockets filled with awe and wonder,-- Whether shores Devonian or Silurian beaches,-- Tell us thy strange story!

"Or has the professor slightly antedated By some thousand years thy advent on this planet, Giving thee an air that's somewhat better fitted For cold-blooded creatures?

"Wert thou true spectator of that mighty forest When above thy head the stately Sigillaria Reared its columned trunks in that remote and distant Carboniferous epoch?

"Tell us of that scene,--the dim and watery woodland, Songless, silent, hushed, with never bird or insect, Veiled with spreading fronds and screened with tall club mosses, Lycopodiacea,--

"When beside thee walked the solemn Plesiosaurus, And around thee crept the festive Ichthyosaurus, While from time to time above thee flew and circled Cheerful Pterodactyls.

"Tell us of thy food,--those half-marine refections, Crinoids on the shell and Brachipods au naturel,-- Cuttlefish to which the pieuvre of Victor Hugo Seems a periwinkle.

"Speak, thou awful vestige of the earth's creation, Solitary fragment of remains organic! Tell the wondrous secret of thy past existence,-- Speak! thou oldest primate!"

Even as I gazed, a thrill of the maxilla, And a lateral movement of the condyloid process, With post-pliocene sounds of healthy mastication, Ground the teeth together.

And from that imperfect dental exhibition, Stained with express juices of the weed nicotian, Came these hollow accents, blent with softer murmurs Of expectoration:

"Which my name is Bowers, and my crust was busted Falling down a shaft in Calaveras County; But I'd take it kindly if you'd send the pieces Home to old Missouri!"

* See notes at end.

THE BALLAD OF MR. COOKE

(LEGEND OF THE CLIFF HOUSE, SAN FRANCISCO)

Where the sturdy ocean breeze Drives the spray of roaring seas, That the Cliff House balconies Overlook: There, in spite of rain that balked, With his sandals duly chalked, Once upon a tight-rope walked Mr. Cooke.

But the jester's lightsome mien, And his spangles and his sheen, All had vanished when the scene He forsook. Yet in some delusive hope, In some vague desire to cope, ONE still came to view the rope Walked by Cooke.

Amid Beauty's bright array, On that strange eventful day, Partly hidden from the spray, In a nook, Stood Florinda Vere de Vere; Who, with wind-disheveled hair, And a rapt, distracted air, Gazed on Cooke.

Then she turned, and quickly cried To her lover at her side, While her form with love and pride Wildly shook: "Clifford Snook! oh, hear me now! Here I break each plighted vow; There's but one to whom I bow, And that's Cooke!"

Haughtily that young man spoke: "I descend from noble folk; 'Seven Oaks,' and then 'Se'nnoak,' Lastly 'Snook,' Is the way my name I trace. Shall a youth of noble race In affairs of love give place To a Cooke?"

"Clifford Snook, I know thy claim To that lineage and name, And I think I've read the same In Horne Tooke; But I swear, by all divine, Never, never, to be thine, Till thou canst upon yon line Walk like Cooke."

Though to that gymnastic feat He no closer might compete Than to strike a BALANCE-sheet In a book; Yet thenceforward from that day He his figure would display In some wild athletic way, After Cooke.

On some household eminence, On a clothes-line or a fence, Over ditches, drains, and thence O'er a brook, He, by high ambition led, Ever walked and balanced, Till the people, wondering, said, "How like Cooke!"

Step by step did he proceed, Nerved by valor, not by greed, And at last the crowning deed Undertook. Misty was the midnight air, And the cliff was bleak and bare, When he came to do and dare, Just like Cooke.

Through the darkness, o'er the flow, Stretched the line where he should go, Straight across as flies the crow Or the rook. One wild glance around he cast; Then he faced the ocean blast, And he strode the cable last Touched by Cooke.

Vainly roared the angry seas, Vainly blew the ocean breeze; But, alas! the walker's knees Had a crook; And before he reached the rock Did they both together knock, And he stumbled with a shock-- Unlike Cooke!

Downward dropping in the dark, Like an arrow to its mark, Or a fish-pole when a shark Bites the hook, Dropped the pole he could not save, Dropped the walker, and the wave Swift engulfed the rival brave Of J. Cooke!

Came a roar across the sea Of sea-lions in their glee, In a tongue remarkably Like Chinook; And the maddened sea-gull seemed Still to utter, as he screamed, "Perish thus the wretch who deemed Himself Cooke!"

But on misty moonlit nights Comes a skeleton in tights, Walks once more the giddy heights He mistook; And unseen to mortal eyes, Purged of grosser earthly ties, Now at last in spirit guise Outdoes Cooke.

Still the sturdy ocean breeze Sweeps the spray of roaring seas, Where the Cliff House balconies Overlook; And the maidens in their prime, Reading of this mournful rhyme, Weep where, in the olden time, Walked J. Cooke.

THE BALLAD OF THE EMEU

Oh, say, have you seen at the Willows so green-- So charming and rurally true-- A singular bird, with a manner absurd, Which they call the Australian Emeu? Have you Ever seen this Australian Emeu?

It trots all around with its head on the ground, Or erects it quite out of your view; And the ladies all cry, when its figure they spy, "Oh! what a sweet pretty Emeu! Oh! do Just look at that lovely Emeu!"

One day to this spot, when the weather was hot, Came Matilda Hortense Fortescue; And beside her there came a youth of high name,-- Augustus Florell Montague: The two Both loved that wild, foreign Emeu.

With two loaves of bread then they fed it, instead Of the flesh of the white Cockatoo, Which once was its food in that wild neighborhood Where ranges the sweet Kangaroo, That too Is game for the famous Emeu!

Old saws and gimlets but its appetite whets, Like the world-famous bark of Peru; There's nothing so hard that the bird will discard, And nothing its taste will eschew That you Can give that long-legged Emeu!

The time slipped away in this innocent play, When up jumped the bold Montague: "Where's that specimen pin that I gayly did win In raffle, and gave unto you, Fortescue?" No word spoke the guilty Emeu!

"Quick! tell me his name whom thou gavest that same, Ere these hands in thy blood I imbrue!" "Nay, dearest," she cried, as she clung to his side, "I'm innocent as that Emeu!" "Adieu!" He replied, "Miss M. H. Fortescue!"

Down she dropped at his feet, all as white as a sheet, As wildly he fled from her view; He thought 'twas her sin,--for he knew not the pin Had been gobbled up by the Emeu; All through The voracity of that Emeu!

MRS. JUDGE JENKINS

(BEING THE ONLY GENUINE SEQUEL TO "MAUD MULLER")

Maud Muller all that summer day Raked the meadow sweet with hay;

Yet, looking down the distant lane, She hoped the Judge would come again.

But when he came, with smile and bow, Maud only blushed, and stammered, "Ha-ow?"

And spoke of her "pa," and wondered whether He'd give consent they should wed together.

Old Muller burst in tears, and then Begged that the Judge would lend him "ten;"

For trade was dull, and wages low, And the "craps," this year, were somewhat slow.

And ere the languid summer died, Sweet Maud became the Judge's bride.

But on the day that they were mated, Maud's brother Bob was intoxicated;

And Maud's relations, twelve in all, Were very drunk at the Judge's hall.

And when the summer came again, The young bride bore him babies twain;

And the Judge was blest, but thought it strange That bearing children made such a change;

For Maud grew broad and red and stout, And the waist that his arm once clasped about

Was more than he now could span; and he Sighed as he pondered, ruefully,

How that which in Maud was native grace In Mrs. Jenkins was out of place;

And thought of the twins, and wished that they Looked less like the men who raked the hay

On Muller's farm, and dreamed with pain Of the day he wandered down the lane.

And looking down that dreary track, He half regretted that he came back;

For, had he waited, he might have wed Some maiden fair and thoroughbred;

For there be women fair as she, Whose verbs and nouns do more agree.

Alas for maiden! alas for judge! And the sentimental,--that's one-half "fudge;"

For Maud soon thought the Judge a bore, With all his learning and all his lore;

And the Judge would have bartered Maud's fair face For more refinement and social grace.

If, of all words of tongue and pen, The saddest are, "It might have been,"

More sad are these we daily see: "It is, but hadn't ought to be."

A GEOLOGICAL MADRIGAL

I have found out a gift for my fair; I know where the fossils abound, Where the footprints of Aves declare The birds that once walked on the ground. Oh, come, and--in technical speech-- We'll walk this Devonian shore, Or on some Silurian beach We'll wander, my love, evermore.

I will show thee the sinuous track By the slow-moving Annelid made, Or the Trilobite that, farther back, In the old Potsdam sandstone was laid; Thou shalt see, in his Jurassic tomb, The Plesiosaurus embalmed; In his Oolitic prime and his bloom, Iguanodon safe and unharmed.

You wished--I remember it well, And I loved you the more for that wish-- For a perfect cystedian shell And a WHOLE holocephalic fish. And oh, if Earth's strata contains In its lowest Silurian drift, Or palaeozoic remains The same, 'tis your lover's free gift!

Then come, love, and never say nay, But calm all your maidenly fears; We'll note, love, in one summer's day The record of millions of years; And though the Darwinian plan Your sensitive feelings may shock, We'll find the beginning of man, Our fossil ancestors, in rock!

AVITOR

(AN AERIAL RETROSPECT)

What was it filled my youthful dreams, In place of Greek or Latin themes, Or beauty's wild, bewildering beams? Avitor!

What visions and celestial scenes I filled with aerial machines, Montgolfier's and Mr. Green's! Avitor!

What fairy tales seemed things of course! The roc that brought Sindbad across, The Calendar's own winged horse! Avitor!

How many things I took for facts,-- Icarus and his conduct lax, And how he sealed his fate with wax! Avitor!

The first balloons I sought to sail, Soap-bubbles fair, but all too frail, Or kites,--but thereby hangs a tail. Avitor!

What made me launch from attic tall A kitten and a parasol, And watch their bitter, frightful fall? Avitor!

What youthful dreams of high renown Bade me inflate the parson's gown, That went not up, nor yet came down? Avitor!

My first ascent I may not tell; Enough to know that in that well My first high aspirations fell. Avitor!

My other failures let me pass: The dire explosions, and, alas! The friends I choked with noxious gas. Avitor!

For lo! I see perfected rise The vision of my boyish eyes, The messenger of upper skies. Avitor!

THE WILLOWS

(AFTER EDGAR ALLAN POE)

The skies they were ashen and sober, The streets they were dirty and drear; It was night in the month of October, Of my most immemorial year. Like the skies, I was perfectly sober, As I stopped at the mansion of Shear,-- At the Nightingale,--perfectly sober, And the willowy woodland down here.

Here, once in an alley Titanic Of Ten-pins, I roamed with my soul,-- Of Ten-pins, with Mary, my soul; They were days when my heart was volcanic, And impelled me to frequently roll, And made me resistlessly roll, Till my ten-strikes created a panic In the realms of the Boreal pole,-- Till my ten-strikes created a panic With the monkey atop of his pole.

I repeat, I was perfectly sober, But my thoughts they were palsied and sear,-- My thoughts were decidedly queer; For I knew not the month was October, And I marked not the night of the year; I forgot that sweet morceau of Auber That the band oft performed down here, And I mixed the sweet music of Auber With the Nightingale's music by Shear.

And now as the night was senescent, And star-dials pointed to morn, And car-drivers hinted of morn, At the end of the path a liquescent And bibulous lustre was born; 'Twas made by the bar-keeper present, Who mixed a duplicate horn,-- His two hands describing a crescent Distinct with a duplicate horn.

And I said: "This looks perfectly regal, For it's warm, and I know I feel dry,-- I am confident that I feel dry. We have come past the emeu and eagle, And watched the gay monkey on high; Let us drink to the emeu and eagle, To the swan and the monkey on high,-- To the eagle and monkey on high; For this bar-keeper will not inveigle, Bully boy with the vitreous eye,-- He surely would never inveigle, Sweet youth with the crystalline eye."

But Mary, uplifting her finger, Said: "Sadly this bar I mistrust,-- I fear that this bar does not trust. Oh, hasten! oh, let us not linger! Oh, fly,--let us fly,--are we must!" In terror she cried, letting sink her Parasol till it trailed in the dust; In agony sobbed, letting sink her Parasol till it trailed in the dust,-- Till it sorrowfully trailed in the dust.

Then I pacified Mary and kissed her, And tempted her into the room, And conquered her scruples and gloom; And we passed to the end of the vista, But were stopped by the warning of doom,-- By some words that were warning of doom. And I said, "What is written, sweet sister, At the opposite end of the room?" She sobbed, as she answered, "All liquors Must be paid for ere leaving the room."

Then my heart it grew ashen and sober, As the streets were deserted and drear, For my pockets were empty and drear; And I cried: "It was surely October, On this very night of last year, That I journeyed, I journeyed down here,-- That I brought a fair maiden down here, On this night of all nights in the year! Ah! to me that inscription is clear; Well I know now, I'm perfectly sober, Why no longer they credit me here,-- Well I know now that music of Auber, And this Nightingale, kept by one Shear."

NORTH BEACH

(AFTER SPENSER)

Lo! where the castle of bold Pfeiffer throws Its sullen shadow on the rolling tide,-- No more the home where joy and wealth repose, But now where wassailers in cells abide; See yon long quay that stretches far and wide, Well known to citizens as wharf of Meiggs: There each sweet Sabbath walks in maiden pride The pensive Margaret, and brave Pat, whose legs Encased in broadcloth oft keep time with Peg's.

Here cometh oft the tender nursery-maid, While in her ear her love his tale doth pour; Meantime her infant doth her charge evade, And rambleth sagely on the sandy shore, Till the sly sea-crab, low in ambush laid, Seizeth his leg and biteth him full sore. Ah me! what sounds the shuddering echoes bore When his small treble mixed with Ocean's roar!

Hard by there stands an ancient hostelrie, And at its side a garden, where the bear, The stealthy catamount, and coon agree To work deceit on all who gather there; And when Augusta--that unconscious fair-- With nuts and apples plieth Bruin free, Lo! the green parrot claweth her back hair, And the gray monkey grabbeth fruits that she On her gay bonnet wears, and laugheth loud in glee!

THE LOST TAILS OF MILETUS

High on the Thracian hills, half hid in the billows of clover, Thyme, and the asphodel blooms, and lulled by Pactolian streamlet, She of Miletus lay, and beside her an aged satyr Scratched his ear with his hoof, and playfully mumbled his chestnuts.

Vainly the Maenid and the Bassarid gamboled about her, The free-eyed Bacchante sang, and Pan--the renowned, the accomplished--Executed his difficult solo. In vain were their gambols and dances; High o'er the Thracian hills rose the voice of the shepherdess, wailing:

"Ai! for the fleecy flocks, the meek-nosed, the passionless faces; Ai! for the tallow-scented, the straight-tailed, the high-stepping; Ai! for the timid glance, which is that which the rustic, sagacious, Applies to him who loves but may not declare his passion!"

Her then Zeus answered slow: "O daughter of song and sorrow, Hapless tender of sheep, arise from thy long lamentation! Since thou canst not trust fate, nor behave as becomes a Greek maiden, Look and behold thy sheep." And lo! they returned to her tailless!

THE RITUALIST

(BY A COMMUNICANT OF "ST. JAMES'S")

He wore, I think, a chasuble, the day when first we met; A stole and snowy alb likewise,--I recollect it yet. He called me "daughter," as he raised his jeweled hand to bless; And then, in thrilling undertones, he asked, "Would I confess?"

O mother dear! blame not your child, if then on bended knees I dropped, and thought of Abelard, and also Eloise; Or when, beside the altar high, he bowed before the pyx, I envied that seraphic kiss he gave the crucifix.

The cruel world may think it wrong, perhaps may deem me weak, And, speaking of that sainted man, may call his conduct "cheek;" And, like that wicked barrister whom Cousin Harry quotes, May term his mixed chalice "grog," his vestments "petticoats;"

But, whatsoe'er they do or say, I'll build a Christian's hope On incense and on altar-lights, on chasuble and cope. Let others prove, by precedent, the faith that they profess: "His can't be wrong" that's symbolized by such becoming dress.

A MORAL VINDICATOR

If Mr. Jones, Lycurgus B., Had one peculiar quality, 'Twas his severe advocacy Of conjugal fidelity.

His views of heaven were very free; His views of life were painfully Ridiculous; but fervently He dwelt on marriage sanctity.

He frequently went on a spree; But in his wildest revelry, On this especial subject he Betrayed no ambiguity.

And though at times Lycurgus B. Did lay his hands not lovingly Upon his wife, the sanctity Of wedlock was his guaranty.

But Mrs. Jones declined to see Affairs in the same light as he, And quietly got a decree Divorcing her from that L. B.

And what did Jones, Lycurgus B., With his known idiosyncrasy? He smiled,--a bitter smile to see,-- And drew the weapon of Bowie.

He did what Sickles did to Key,-- What Cole on Hiscock wrought, did he; In fact, on persons twenty-three He proved the marriage sanctity.

The counselor who took the fee, The witnesses and referee, The judge who granted the decree, Died in that wholesale butchery.

And then when Jones, Lycurgus B., Had wiped the weapon of Bowie, Twelve jurymen did instantly Acquit and set Lycurgus free.

CALIFORNIA MADRIGAL

(ON THE APPROACH OF SPRING)

Oh, come, my beloved, from thy winter abode, From thy home on the Yuba, thy ranch overflowed; For the waters have fallen, the winter has fled, And the river once more has returned to its bed.

Oh, mark how the spring in its beauty is near! How the fences and tules once more reappear! How soft lies the mud on the banks of yon slough By the hole in the levee the waters broke through!

All nature, dear Chloris, is blooming to greet The glance of your eye and the tread of your feet; For the trails are all open, the roads are all free, And the highwayman's whistle is heard on the lea.

Again swings the lash on the high mountain trail, And the pipe of the packer is scenting the gale; The oath and the jest ringing high o'er the plain, Where the smut is not always confined to the grain.

Once more glares the sunlight on awning and roof, Once more the red clay's pulverized by the hoof, Once more the dust powders the "outsides" with red, Once more at the station the whiskey is spread.

Then fly with me, love, ere the summer's begun, And the mercury mounts to one hundred and one; Ere the grass now so green shall be withered and sear, In the spring that obtains but one month in the year.

WHAT THE ENGINES SAID

(OPENING OF THE PACIFIC RAILROAD)

What was it the Engines said, Pilots touching,--head to head Facing on the single track, Half a world behind each back? This is what the Engines said, Unreported and unread.

With a prefatory screech, In a florid Western speech, Said the Engine from the WEST: "I am from Sierra's crest; And if altitude's a test, Why, I reckon, it's confessed That I've done my level best."

Said the Engine from the EAST: "They who work best talk the least. S'pose you whistle down your brakes; What you've done is no great shakes, Pretty fair,--but let our meeting Be a different kind of greeting. Let these folks with champagne stuffing, Not their Engines, do the PUFFING.

"Listen! Where Atlantic beats Shores of snow and summer heats; Where the Indian autumn skies Paint the woods with wampum dyes,-- I have chased the flying sun, Seeing all he looked upon, Blessing all that he has blessed, Nursing in my iron breast All his vivifying heat, All his clouds about my crest; And before my flying feet Every shadow must retreat."

Said the Western Engine, "Phew!" And a long, low whistle blew. "Come, now, really that's the oddest Talk for one so very modest. You brag of your East! YOU do? Why, I bring the East to YOU! All the Orient, all Cathay, Find through me the shortest way; And the sun you follow here Rises in my hemisphere. Really,--if one must be rude,-- Length, my friend, ain't longitude."

Said the Union: "Don't reflect, or I'll run over some Director." Said the Central: "I'm Pacific; But, when riled, I'm quite terrific. Yet to-day we shall not quarrel, Just to show these folks this moral, How two Engines--in their vision-- Once have met without collision."

That is what the Engines said, Unreported and unread; Spoken slightly through the nose, With a whistle at the close.

THE LEGENDS OF THE RHINE

Beetling walls with ivy grown, Frowning heights of mossy stone; Turret, with its flaunting flag Flung from battlemented crag; Dungeon-keep and fortalice Looking down a precipice O'er the darkly glancing wave By the Lurline-haunted cave; Robber haunt and maiden bower, Home of Love and Crime and Power,-- That's the scenery, in fine, Of the Legends of the Rhine.

One bold baron, double-dyed Bigamist and parricide, And, as most the stories run, Partner of the Evil One; Injured innocence in white, Fair but idiotic quite, Wringing of her lily hands; Valor fresh from Paynim lands, Abbot ruddy, hermit pale, Minstrel fraught with many a tale,-- Are the actors that combine In the Legends of the Rhine.

Bell-mouthed flagons round a board; Suits of armor, shield, and sword; Kerchief with its bloody stain; Ghosts of the untimely slain; Thunder-clap and clanking chain; Headsman's block and shining axe; Thumb-screw, crucifixes, racks; Midnight-tolling chapel bell, Heard across the gloomy fell,-- These and other pleasant facts Are the properties that shine In the Legends of the Rhine.

Maledictions, whispered vows Underneath the linden boughs; Murder, bigamy, and theft; Travelers of goods bereft; Rapine, pillage, arson, spoil,-- Everything but honest toil, Are the deeds that best define Every Legend of the Rhine.

That Virtue always meets reward, But quicker when it wears a sword; That Providence has special care Of gallant knight and lady fair; That villains, as a thing of course, Are always haunted by remorse,-- Is the moral, I opine, Of the Legends of the Rhine.

SONGS WITHOUT SENSE

FOR THE PARLOR AND PIANO

I. THE PERSONIFIED SENTIMENTAL

Affection's charm no longer gilds The idol of the shrine; But cold Oblivion seeks to fill Regret's ambrosial wine. Though Friendship's offering buried lies 'Neath cold Aversion's snow, Regard and Faith will ever bloom Perpetually below.

I see thee whirl in marble halls, In Pleasure's giddy train; Remorse is never on that brow, Nor Sorrow's mark of pain. Deceit has marked thee for her own; Inconstancy the same; And Ruin wildly sheds its gleam Athwart thy path of shame.

II. THE HOMELY PATHETIC

The dews are heavy on my brow; My breath comes hard and low; Yet, mother dear, grant one request, Before your boy must go. Oh! lift me ere my spirit sinks, And ere my senses fail, Place me once more, O mother dear, Astride the old fence-rail.

The old fence-rail, the old fence-rail! How oft these youthful legs, With Alice' and Ben Bolt's, were hung Across those wooden pegs! 'Twas there the nauseating smoke Of my first pipe arose: O mother dear, these agonies Are far less keen than those.

I know where lies the hazel dell, Where simple Nellie sleeps; I know the cot of Nettie Moore, And where the willow weeps. I know the brookside and the mill, But all their pathos fails Beside the days when once I sat Astride the old fence-rails.

III. SWISS AIR

I'm a gay tra, la, la, With my fal, lal, la, la, And my bright-- And my light-- Tra, la, le. [Repeat.]

Then laugh, ha, ha, ha, And ring, ting, ling, ling, And sing fal, la, la, La, la, le. [Repeat.]

VI. LITTLE POSTERITY

MASTER JOHNNY'S NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR

It was spring the first time that I saw her, for her papa and mamma moved in Next door, just as skating was over, and marbles about to begin; For the fence in our back yard was broken, and I saw, as I peeped through the slat, There were "Johnny-jump-ups" all around her, and I knew it was spring just by that.

I never knew whether she saw me, for she didn't say nothing to me, But "Ma! here's a slat in the fence broke, and the boy that is next door can see." But the next day I climbed on our wood-shed, as you know Mamma says I've a right, And she calls out, "Well, peekin' is manners!" and I answered her, "Sass is perlite!"

But I wasn't a bit mad, no, Papa, and to prove it, the very next day, When she ran past our fence in the morning I happened to get in her way,-- For you know I am "chunked" and clumsy, as she says are all boys of my size,-- And she nearly upset me, she did, Pa, and laughed till tears came in her eyes.

And then we were friends from that moment, for I knew that she told Kitty Sage,-- And she wasn't a girl that would flatter--"that she thought I was tall for my age." And I gave her four apples that evening, and took her to ride on my sled, And-- "What am I telling you this for?" Why, Papa, my neighbor is DEAD!

You don't hear one half I am saying,--I really do think it's too bad! Why, you might have seen crape on her door-knob, and noticed to-day I've been sad. And they've got her a coffin of rosewood, and they say they have dressed her in white, And I've never once looked through the fence, Pa, since she died--at eleven last night.

And Ma says it's decent and proper, as I was her neighbor and friend, That I should go there to the funeral, and she thinks that YOU ought to attend; But I am so clumsy and awkward, I know I shall be in the way, And suppose they should speak to me, Papa, I wouldn't know just what to say.

So I think I will get up quite early,--I know I sleep late, but I know I'll be sure to wake up if our Bridget pulls the string that I'll tie to my toe; And I'll crawl through the fence, and I'll gather the "Johnny-jump-ups" as they grew Round her feet the first day that I saw her, and, Papa, I'll give them to you.

For you're a big man, and, you know, Pa, can come and go just where you choose, And you'll take the flowers in to her, and surely they'll never refuse; But, Papa, don't SAY they're from Johnny; THEY won't understand, don't you see? But just lay them down on her bosom, and, Papa, SHE'LL know they're from Me.

MISS EDITH'S MODEST REQUEST

My Papa knows you, and he says you're a man who makes reading for books; But I never read nothing you wrote, nor did Papa,--I know by his looks. So I guess you're like me when I talk, and I talk, and I talk all the day, And they only say, "Do stop that child!" or, "Nurse, take Miss Edith away."

But Papa said if I was good I could ask you--alone by myself-- If you wouldn't write me a book like that little one up on the shelf. I don't mean the pictures, of course, for to make THEM you've got to be smart But the reading that runs all around them, you know,--just the easiest part.

You needn't mind what it's about, for no one will see it but me, And Jane,--that's my nurse,--and John,--he's the coachman,--just only us three. You're to write of a bad little girl, that was wicked and bold and all that; And then you're to write, if you please, something good--very good-- of a cat!

This cat, she was virtuous and meek, and kind to her parents, and mild, And careful and neat in her ways, though her mistress was such a bad child; And hours she would sit and would gaze when her mistress--that's me-- was so bad, And blink, just as if she would say, "Oh, Edith! you make my heart sad."

And yet, you would scarcely believe it, that beautiful, angelic cat Was blamed by the servants for stealing whatever, they said, she'd get at. And when John drank my milk,--don't you tell me! I know just the way it was done,-- They said 'twas the cat,--and she sitting and washing her face in the sun!

And then there was Dick, my canary. When I left its cage open one day, They all made believe that she ate it, though I know that the bird flew away. And why? Just because she was playing with a feather she found on the floor. As if cats couldn't play with a feather without people thinking 'twas more!

Why, once we were romping together, when I knocked down a vase from the shelf, That cat was as grieved and distressed as if she had done it herself; And she walked away sadly and hid herself, and never came out until tea,-- So they say, for they sent ME to bed, and she never came even to me.

No matter whatever happened, it was laid at the door of that cat. Why, once when I tore my apron,--she was wrapped in it, and I called "Rat!"-- Why, they blamed that on HER. I shall never--no, not to my dying day-- Forget the pained look that she gave me when they slapped ME and took me away.

Of course, you know just what comes next, when a child is as lovely as that: She wasted quite slowly away; it was goodness was killing that cat. I know it was nothing she ate, for her taste was exceedingly nice; But they said she stole Bobby's ice cream, and caught a bad cold from the ice.

And you'll promise to make me a book like that little one up on the shelf, And you'll call her "Naomi," because it's a name that she just gave herself; For she'd scratch at my door in the morning, and whenever I'd call out, "Who's there?" She would answer, "Naomi! Naomi!" like a Christian, I vow and declare.

And you'll put me and her in a book. And mind, you're to say I was bad; And I might have been badder than that but for the example I had. And you'll say that she was a Maltese, and--what's that you asked? "Is she dead?" Why, please, sir, THERE AIN'T ANY CAT! You're to make one up out of your head!

MISS EDITH MAKES IT PLEASANT FOR BROTHER JACK

"Crying!" Of course I am crying, and I guess you would be crying, too, If people were telling such stories as they tell about me, about YOU. Oh yes, you can laugh if you want to, and smoke as you didn't care how, And get your brains softened like uncle's. Dr. Jones says you're gettin' it now.

Why don't you say "Stop!" to Miss Ilsey? She cries twice as much as I do, And she's older and cries just from meanness,--for a ribbon or anything new. Ma says it's her "sensitive nature." Oh my! No, I sha'n't stop my talk! And I don't want no apples nor candy, and I don't want to go take a walk!

I know why you're mad! Yes, I do, now! You think that Miss Ilsey likes YOU, And I've heard her REPEATEDLY call you the bold-facest boy that she knew; And she'd "like to know where you learnt manners." Oh yes! Kick the table,--that's right! Spill the ink on my dress, and go then round telling Ma that I look like a fright!

What stories? Pretend you don't know that they're saying I broke off the match Twixt old Money-grubber and Mary, by saying she called him "Crosspatch," When the only allusion I made him about sister Mary was, she Cared more for his cash than his temper, and you know, Jack, you said that to me.

And it's true! But it's ME, and I'm scolded, and Pa says if I keep on I might By and by get my name in the papers! Who cares? Why, 'twas only last night I was reading how Pa and the sheriff were selling some lots, and it's plain If it's awful to be in the papers, why, Papa would go and complain.

You think it ain't true about Ilsey? Well, I guess I know girls, and I say There's nothing I see about Ilsey to show she likes you, anyway! I know what it means when a girl who has called her cat after one boy Goes and changes its name to another's. And she's done it--and I wish you joy!

MISS EDITH MAKES ANOTHER FRIEND

Oh, you're the girl lives on the corner? Come in--if you want to-- come quick! There's no one but me in the house, and the cook--but she's only a stick. Don't try the front way, but come over the fence--through the window--that's how. Don't mind the big dog--he won't bite you--just see him obey me! there, now!

What's your name? Mary Ellen? How funny! Mine's Edith--it's nicer, you see; But yours does for you, for you're plainer, though maybe you're gooder than me; For Jack says I'm sometimes a devil, but Jack, of all folks, needn't talk, For I don't call the seamstress an angel till Ma says the poor thing must "walk."

Come in! It's quite dark in the parlor, for sister will keep the blinds down, For you know her complexion is sallow like yours, but she isn't as brown; Though Jack says that isn't the reason she likes to sit here with Jim Moore. Do you think that he meant that she kissed him? Would you--if your lips wasn't sore?

If you like, you can try our piano. 'Tain't ours. A man left it here To rent by the month, although Ma says he hasn't been paid for a year. Sister plays--oh, such fine variations!--why, I once heard a gentleman say That she didn't mind THAT for the music--in fact, it was just in her way!

Ain't I funny? And yet it's the queerest of all that, whatever I say, One half of the folks die a-laughing, and the rest, they all look t'other way. And some say, "That child!" Do they ever say that to such people as you? Though maybe you're naturally silly, and that makes your eyes so askew.

Now stop--don't you dare to be crying! Just as sure as you live, if you do, I'll call in my big dog to bite you, and I'll make my Papa kill you, too! And then where'll you be? So play pretty. There's my doll, and a nice piece of cake. You don't want it--you think it is poison! Then I'LL eat it, dear, just for your sake!

WHAT MISS EDITH SAW FROM HER WINDOW

Our window's not much, though it fronts on the street; There's a fly in the pane that gets nothin' to eat; But it's curious how people think it's a treat For ME to look out of the window!

Why, when company comes, and they're all speaking low, With their chairs drawn together, then some one says, "Oh! Edith dear!--that's a good child--now run, love, and go And amuse yourself there at the window!"

Or Bob--that's my brother--comes in with his chum, And they whisper and chuckle, the same words will come. And it's "Edith, look here! Oh, I say! what a rum Lot of things you can see from that window!"

And yet, as I told you, there's only that fly Buzzing round in the pane, and a bit of blue sky, And the girl in the opposite window, that I Look at when SHE looks from HER window.

And yet, I've been thinking I'd so like to see If what goes on behind HER, goes on behind ME! And then, goodness gracious! what fun it would be For us BOTH as we sit by our window!

How we'd know when the parcels were hid in a drawer, Or things taken out that one never sees more; What people come in and go out of the door, That we never see from the window!

And that night when the stranger came home with our Jane I might SEE what I HEARD then, that sounded so plain-- Like when my wet fingers I rub on the pane (Which they won't let ME do on my window).

And I'd know why papa shut the door with a slam, And said something funny that sounded like "jam," And then "Edith--where are you?" I said, "Here I am." "Ah, that's right, dear, look out of the window!"

They say when I'm grown up these things will appear More plain than they do when I look at them here, But I think I see some things uncommonly clear, As I sit and look down from the window.

What things? Oh, the things that I make up, you know, Out of stories I've read--and they all pass below. Ali Baba, the Forty Thieves, all in a row, Go by, as I look from my window.

That's only at church time; other days there's no crowd. Don't laugh! See that big man who looked up and bowed? That's our butcher--I call him the Sultan Mahoud When he nods to me here at the window!

And THAT man--he's our neighbor--just gone for a ride Has three wives in the churchyard that lie side by side. So I call him "Bluebeard" in search of his bride, While I'm Sister Anne at the window.

And what do I call you? Well, here's what I DO: When my sister expects you, she puts me here, too; But I wait till you enter, to see if it's you, And then--I just OPEN the window!

"Dear child!" Yes, that's me! "Oh, you ask what that's for? Well, Papa says you're 'Poverty's self,' and what's more, I open the window, when YOU'RE at the door, To see Love fly out of the window!"

ON THE LANDING

(AN IDYL OF THE BALUSTERS)

BOBBY, aetat. 3 1/2. JOHNNY, aetat. 4 1/2.

BOBBY

Do you know why they've put us in that back room, Up in the attic, close against the sky, And made believe our nursery's a cloak-room? Do you know why?

JOHNNY

No more I don't, nor why that Sammy's mother, What Ma thinks horrid, 'cause he bunged my eye, Eats an ice cream, down there, like any other! No more don't I!

BOBBY

Do you know why Nurse says it isn't manners For you and me to ask folks twice for pie, And no one hits that man with two bananas? Do you know why?

JOHNNY

No more I don't, nor why that girl, whose dress is Off of her shoulders, don't catch cold and die, When you and me gets croup when WE undresses! No more don't I!

BOBBY

Perhaps she ain't as good as you and I is, And God don't want her up there in the sky, And lets her live--to come in just when pie is-- Perhaps that's why!

JOHNNY

Do you know why that man that's got a cropped head Rubbed it just now as if he felt a fly? Could it be, Bobby, something that I dropped? And is that why?

BOBBY

Good boys behaves, and so they don't get scolded, Nor drop hot milk on folks as they pass by.

JOHNNY (piously)

Marbles would bounce on Mr. Jones' bald head-- But I sha'n't try!

BOBBY

Do you know why Aunt Jane is always snarling At you and me because we tells a lie, And she don't slap that man that called her darling? Do you know why?

JOHNNY

No more I don't, nor why that man with Mamma Just kissed her hand.

BOBBY

She hurt it--and that's why; He made it well, the very way that Mamma Does do to I.

JOHNNY

I feel so sleepy.... Was that Papa kissed us? What made him sigh, and look up to the sky?

BOBBY

We weren't downstairs, and he and God had missed us, And that was why!

NOTES

THE LOST GALLEON. As the custom on which the central incident of this legend is based may not be familiar to all readers, I will repeat here that it is the habit of navigators to drop a day from their calendar in crossing westerly the 180th degree of longitude of Greenwich, adding a day in coming east; and that the idea of the lost galleon had an origin as prosaic as the log of the first China Mail Steamer from San Francisco. The explanation of the custom and its astronomical relations belongs rather to the usual text-books than to poetical narration. If any reader thinks I have overdrawn the credulous superstitions of the ancient navigators, I refer him to the veracious statements of Maldonado, De Fonte, the later voyages of La Perouse and Anson, and the charts of 1640. In the charts of that day Spanish navigators reckoned longitude E. 360 degrees from the meridian of the Isle of Ferro. For the sake of perspicuity before a modern audience, the more recent meridian of Madrid was substituted. The custom of dropping a day at some arbitrary point in crossing the Pacific westerly, I need not say, remains unaffected by any change of meridian. I know not if any galleon was ever really missing. For two hundred and fifty years an annual trip was made between Acapulco and Manila. It may be some satisfaction to the more severely practical of my readers to know that, according to the best statistics of insurance, the loss during that period would be exactly three vessels and six hundredths of a vessel, which would certainly justify me in this summary disposition of ONE.

THE PLIOCENE SKULL. This extraordinary fossil is in the possession of Prof. Josiah D. Whitney, of the State Geological Survey of California. The poem was based on the following paragraph from the daily press of 1868: "A human skull has been found in California, in the pliocene formation. This skull is the remnant not only of the earliest pioneer of this State, but the oldest known human being.... The skull was found in a shaft 150 feet deep, two miles from Angels in Calaveras County, by a miner named James Watson, who gave it to Mr. Scribner, a merchant, who gave it to Dr. Jones, who sent it to the State Geological Survey.... The published volume of the State Survey of the Geology of California states that man existed here contemporaneously with the mastodon, but this fossil proves that he was here before the mastodon was known to exist."