Bret Harte

“ The great pyramid towered up from the desert with its apex toward the moon which hung in the sky. For centuries it had stood thus, disdaining the aid of gods or man, being, as the Sphinx herself observed, able to stand up for itself. And this was no small praise from that sublime yet mysterious female who had seen the ages come and go, empires rise and fall, novelist succeed novelist, and who, for eons and cycles the cynosure and centre of admiration and men's idolatrous worship, had yet—wonderful for a woman—through it all kept her head, which now alone remained to survey calmly the present. ”

“ The fact is you resemble too much—you're ALWAYS resembling. You resemble a man of fashion, and you're not; a wit, and you're not; a soldier, a sportsman, a hero—and you're none of 'em. Altogether, you're not in the least convincing. Now, listen! There's a good chance for you to go as our attache with Lord Mumblepeg, the new Ambassador to Cochin China. In all the novels, you know, attaches are always the confidants of Grand Duchesses, and know more state secrets than their chiefs; in real life, I believe they are something like a city clerk with a leaning to private theatricals. ”

“ John Gale turned to Brother Bones. "Then you saw her—Golly?"
"No," said Brother Bones.
"Why? What on earth have you been doing?"
"Dunno! Found myself in stashun—zis morning! Thashall!"
Then John Gale sought the Superior in an agony of remorse, and confessed all. "I am unfit to remain doorkeeper. Remove me," he groaned bitterly.
The old man smiled gently. "On the contrary, I should have given you the keys myself. Hereafter you can keep them. The ways of our Brotherhood are mysterious,—indeed, you may think idiotic,—but we are not responsible for them. ”

“ Barabbas' Hospital—just taking in all of dear, roaring, dirty London in one gulp! Such a place—Lordy! I've been waiting three hours to see the crowd go by, and they haven't gone yet! Such crowds, such busses,—all green and blue, only a penny fare, and you can ride on top if you want to! Think of that, you dear old Manx people! But there—"the bell goes a-ringing for Sarah!"—they're calling for Nurse! That's the worst of this job: they're always a-dyin' just as you're getting interested in something else! Ta-ta!
GOLLY! ”

“ I only require that I shall be allowed to love John Gale whenever he permits it, which isn't often, and that I may be permitted to write simple letters to my doting relations at the rate of twelve pages a day, giving an account—MY OWN account—of my doings. There! Go on now! Bring on your bears."
They had visited the chambers which Lord Brownstone and Drake occupied together, and in girlish innocence had put on the gentlemen's clothes and danced before them. Then they all went to the theatre, where Golly's delightful simplicity and childish ignorance of the world had charmed them. ”

“ Panting, perspiring, packed together with cheap trippers, but exalted with the one hope of saving the King, we at last staggered out on the Kohlslau platform utterly exhausted. As we did so we heard a distant roar from the city. Fritz turned an ashen gray, Spitz a livid blue. "Are we too late?" he gasped, as we madly fought our way into the street, where shouts of "The King! The King!" were rending the air. "Can it be Black Michael?" ”

“ As Fitz-Fulke hesitated, he added brusquely: "There! Run away and play! I've business with this young man," pointing to McFeckless.
As Fitz-Fulke escaped gladly from the room, the doctor turned to McFeckless. "It won't do, my boy. The Princess is not for you—you'll only break your heart and ruin your family over her! That's my advice. Chuck her!"
"But I cannot," said McFeckless humbly. "Think of her weirdly beautiful eyes."
"I see," said the doctor meditatively; "sort of makes you feel creepy? Kind of all-overishness, eh? That's like her. But whom have we here?" ”

“ But I see now why you tampered with that drawer the other night. By some inexplicable means—possibly another theft—you took the cigar case out of pawn and, like a whipped hound, restored it to me in this feeble, clumsy fashion. You thought to deceive me, Hemlock Jones! More, you thought to destroy my infallibility. Go! I give you your liberty. I shall not summon the three policemen who wait in the adjoining room—but out of my sight forever! ”

“ I'm wondering where my diddleums, Golly, is! We all miss you so much, deary, though we don't miss so many little things as when you were here. My dear, conscientious, unselfish little girl! You don't say where John Gale is. Is he still protecting you—he-he!—you giddy, naughty thing! People wonder on the island why I let you go alone to London—they forget your dear mother was a Frenchwoman! If you see anything your dear old grandfather would like—send it on.
GRANFER.
Later, her aunt wrote:—
Have you seen the Queen yet, and does she wear her crown at breakfast? ”

“ Here, too, was Lady Fitz-Fulke, whose mother was immortalized by Byron—sixty if a day, yet still dressing youthfully—who had sought the land of the Sphinx in the faint hope that in the contiguity of that lady she might pass for being young. Alaster McFeckless, a splendid young Scotchman,—already dressed as a Florentine sailor of the fifteenth century, which enabled him to show his magnificent calves quite as well as in his native highland dress, and who had added with characteristic noble pride a sporran to his costume, was lolling on another divan. ”

“ PUBLISHER'S NOTE.—"In that supreme work of my life, 'The Christian,'" said the gifted novelist to a reporter in speaking of his methods, "I had endowed the characters of Golly and John Gale with such superhuman vitality and absolute reality that—as is well known in the experience of great writers—they became thinking beings, and actually criticised my work, and even INTERFERED and REBELLED to the point of altering my climax and the end!" ”

“ That it was evidently Michael's trick to have the pretender crowned, and then, by exposing the fraud and the condition of the real King, excite the indignation of the duped people, and seat himself on the throne! "But," I burst out, "shall this base-born pretender remain at Kohlslau beside the beautiful Princess Flirtia? Let us to Kohlslau at once and hurl him from the throne!"
"One pretender is as good as another," said Spitz dryly. "But leave HIM to me. 'Tis the King we must protect and succor! ”

“ This is my Lord's cloak in sooth, but not my Lord that lieth in it! Who is this fellow?" At which I did naturally discover the great misprise of those varlets who had taken me for my dear Lord, whom I now damned in my heart for changing of the cloaks! Howbeit, when I had fetched my breath with difficulty, being well nigh spent by reason of the gag, I replyed that I was John Longbowe, my Lord's true yeoman, as good a man as any, as they should presently discover when they set me ashore. ”

“ Some were exciting themselves by chewing a kind of "bhang" made from the plant called pappahmint; others had their faces streaked with djam.
"But who is this they are ducking in the pool?" asked Pi Bol.
"It is one who has foolishly and wantonly conceived that his parents have sent him here to study," said the Moo Kow; "but that is against the rules of the Stalkies, who accept study only as a punishment."
"Then these be surely the 'Bander Log'—the monkey folk—of whom the good Rhuddyidd has told us," said a Gee Gee—"the ones who have no purpose—and forget everything." ”

“ They lived in the Isle of Man. Golly knew a good deal of Man, for even at the age of twelve she was in love with John Gale—only son of Lord Gale, who was connected with the Tempests. Gales, however, were frequent and remarkable along the coast, so that it was not singular that one day she found John "coming on" on a headland where she was sitting. His dog had "pointed" her. "It's exceedingly impolite to point to anything you want," said Golly. Touched by this, and overcome by a strange emotion, John Gale turned away and went to Canada. ”

“ Why don't you try to do something instead of sneering at others who do? You never take anything seriously—except yourself, which isn't worth it. You are proud of your red hair and peaked nose just because you fondly believe that you got them from the Prince of Trulyruralania, and are willing to think evil of your ancestress to satisfy your snobbish little soul. ”

“ And they know nothing of the mystic land of the old gods, filled with profound enigmas of the supernatural, dark secrets yet unexplored except in this book. Well might the great Memnon murmur after this lapse of these thousand years, "They're making me tired!"
Such was the blissful, self-satisfied ignorance of Sir Midas Pyle, or as Lord Fitz-Fulke, with his delightful imitation of the East London accent, called him, Sir "Myde His Pyle," as he leaned back on his divan in the Grand Cairo Hotel. ”

“ Golly is going there, too, as hospital nurse. There's a pair of you! He! he! Look after her, John, and protect her Manx simplicity." Before John could recover himself, Golly was at his side executing the final steps of a "cellar-door flap jig" to the light-hearted refrain:—
"We are a simple family—we are—we are—we are!" ”

“ How long we lay there, Heaven knows! I was awakened by Spitz playing the garden hose on me. He was booted and spurred, with Fritz by his side. The King was lying on a bench, saying feebly: "Blesh you, my chillen."
"By politely acceding to Black Michael's request to 'try our one-and-six sherry,' he has been brought to this condition," said Spitz bitterly. "It's a trick to keep him from being crowned. In this country if the King is crowned while drunk, the kingdom instantly reverts to a villain—no matter who. But in this case the villain is Black Michael. ”

“ In another hour I was before Black Michael's castle at Bock. These are lightning changes, I know—and the sovereignty of Trulyruralania WAS somewhat itinerant—but when a kingdom and a beautiful Princess are at stake, what are you to do? Fritz had begged me to take him along, but I arranged that he should come later, and go up unostentatiously in the lift. I was going by way of the moat. I was to succor the King, but I fear my real object was to get at Rupert of Glasgow. ”

“ YOU, darling! conceived in extravagance, born to impossibility, a challenge to credulity, a problem to the intellect, a 'missing word' for all ages,—are you aware of any one as utterly unsympathetic, unreal, and untrue to nature as you are, existing on the face of the earth, or in the waters under the earth? ”

“ John had started, thinking of Jinny Jones, Golly's deserted and self-immolated friend.
"It is an uncommon name," he stammered—"for a monastery, I mean."
"He is or was an uncommon man!" said the Superior gravely. "But," he added resignedly, "we cannot pick and choose our company here. Most of us have done something and have our own reasons for this retreat. Brother Polygamus escaped here from the persecutions of his sixth wife. ”

“ Howbeit, though no scholar, I am not one of those who misuse the English speech, and, being foolishly led by the hasty custom of scriveners and printers to write the letters "T" and "H" joined together, which resembleth a "Y," do incontinently jump to the conclusion the THE is pronounced "Ye,"—the like of which I never heard in all England. ”

“ I laugh in the wrong place—I do the unnecessary, extravagant thing. Endowed by some strange power with extraordinary attributes, I am supposed to make everybody love me, but I don't—I satisfy nobody; I convince none! ”

“ I have often observed that those who doubt a future state of existence have no hesitation in accepting a previous one," said the doctor dryly. "But come, I see from the way the crowd are hurrying that your divinity's number is up—I mean," he corrected himself hastily, "that she is probably dancing again."
"Aha! with him, the imbecile McFeckless?" ”

“ If I fall, they must never know. You must invent a story for them. I have thought of cholera, but that is played out; you know we have already tried it on The Boy who was Thrown Away. Invent something quiet, peaceable and respectable—as far removed from fighting as possible. ”

“ The man preceded him by devious, narrow ways and dark staircases, coming abruptly upon a small apartment where the Princess sat on a low divan. A single lamp inclosed in an ominous wire cage flared above her. Strange things lay about the floor and shelves, and from another door he could see hideous masks, frightful heads, and disproportionate faces. He shuddered slightly, but recovered himself and fell on his knees before her. "I lofe you," he said madly. "I have always lofed you!" ”

“ The Princess was a music-hall artist who imagined she was a dead and gone Egyptian Princess; and the queerest of all, 'Arry Axes was also a music-hall singer who imagined himself Chevalier—you know, the great Koster artist—and that's how we took him for a Frenchman. McFeckless and my poor old mother were the only ones with any real rank and position—but you know what a beastly bounder Mac was, and the poor mater DID overdo the youthful! We never called the doctor in until the day she wanted to go to a swell ball in London as Little Red Riding-hood. ”

“ Nevertheless, Golly lost her place at the hospital through her heroic defense of her friend Jinny Jones, who had been deceived by Lord Brownstone Ewer. "You would drive that poor girl into the street," she said furiously to the Chairman of the Board, throwing her cap and apron in their faces. "You're a lot of rotten old hypocrites, and I'm glad to get shut of you." Not content with that, she went to Drake and demanded that he should make his friend Lord Brownstone marry Jinny. ”

“ For I shall now make no scruple in declaring that my Lord was the most noble Earl of Southampton, being withheld from so saying before through very plainness and bluntness, desiring as a simple yeoman to make no boast of serving a man of so high quality.
We fared on over Bankside to the Globe playhouse, where my Lord bade me dismount and deliver a secret message to the chief player—which message was, "had he diligently perused and examined that he wot of, and what said he thereof?" ”