Bret Harte

“ Then there was a pause, the flash of the carriage lamps upon white silk, the light tread of a satin foot on the veranda and in the hall, and the entrance of a vision of loveliness! Middle-aged men and old dwellers of cities remembered their youth; younger men bethought themselves of Cinderella and the Prince! There was a thrill and a hush as this last guest—a beautiful girl, radiant with youth and adornment—put a dainty glass to her sparkling eye and advanced familiarly, with outstretched hand, to Dick Spindler. ”

“ Almost impossible to face by day through sliding sands and buffeting winds, at night it was impracticable through the dense sea-fog that stole softly through the Golden Gate at sunset. Thence, until morning, sea and shore were a trackless waste, bounded only by the warning thunders of the unseen sea. The station itself, a rudely built cabin, with two windows,—one furnished with a telescope,—looked like a heap of driftwood, or a stranded wreck left by the retiring sea ”

“ The ditches were overflowed, the fords of the Fork impassable, the sluicing adrift, and the trails and wagon roads to Rough and Ready knee-deep in mud. The stage-coach from Sacramento, entering the settlement by the mountain highway, its wheels and panels clogged and crusted with an unctuous pigment like mud and blood, passed out of it through the overflowed and dangerous ford, and emerged in spotless purity, leaving its stains behind with Rough and Ready. ”

“ Hoskins's praise was not exaggerated; and there was an added charm that Hoskins was not prepared for. She had put on a gown of her own making,—the secret toil of many a long night,—amateurishly fashioned from some cheap yellow calico the doctor had sent her, yet fitting her wonderfully, and showing every curve of her graceful figure. Unaccented by a corset,—an article she had never known,—even the lines of the stiff, unyielding calico had a fashion that was nymph-like and suited her unfettered limbs. Doctor Ruysdael was profoundly moved. Though a philosopher, he was practical. ”

“ Women prematurely aged by frontier drudgery and child-bearing, girls who had known only the rigors and pains of a half-equipped, ill-nourished youth in their battling with the hard realities of nature around them, all found a strange fascination in the extravagant glories and privileges of the unseen world he pictured to them, which they might have found in the fairy tales and nursery legends of civilized children, had they known them. ”

“ It might be a surveyor or engineer,—the only men of a better class who were itinerant.
But another and even greater surprise greeted him as he toiled up the rocky slope towards his farmhouse. The windows of the sitting-room, which were usually blank and black by night, were glittering with unfamiliar light. Like most farmers, he seldom used the room except for formal company, his wife usually avoiding it, and even he himself now preferred the dining-room or the kitchen. ”

“ The Cliff house and Fort Point did not then exist; from Black Point the curving line of shore of “Yerba Buena”—or San Francisco—showed only a stretch of glittering wind-swept sand dunes, interspersed with straggling gullies of half-buried black “scrub oak.” The long six months' summer sun fiercely beat upon it from the cloudless sky above; the long six months' trade winds fiercely beat upon it from the west; the monotonous roll-call of the long Pacific surges regularly beat upon it from the sea. ”

“ But her figure was already lost in the sand dunes. Yet he fancied he still heard the echoes of her voice and his own in this cabin which had so long been dumb and voiceless, and he now started at every sound. For the first time he became aware of the dreadful disorder and untidiness of its uninvaded privacy. He could scarcely believe he had been living with his stove, his bed, and cooking utensils all in one corner of the barnlike room, and he began to put them “to rights” in a rough, hard formality, strongly suggestive of his convict experience. ”

“ I found that instead of being the first one to lie for her and hide her, you were the first one to tell anybody her history, just because you thought it was to the glory of God generally, and of Joshua Rylands in particular.”
“A man's motives are his own,” stammered Rylands.
“Sorry you didn't see it when you questioned mine just now,” said Jack coolly. ”

“ The creaking of wheels and axles, the muffled plunge of hoofs, and the cough of a horse in the dust thus stirred presently broke the profound woodland silence. Then a dirty white canvas-covered emigrant wagon slowly arose with the dust along the ascent. It was travel-stained and worn, and with its rawboned horses seemed to have reached the last stage of its journey and fitness. The only occupants, a man and a girl, appeared to be equally jaded and exhausted, with the added querulousness of discontent in their sallow and badly nourished faces. ”

“ Price was cloaking with her own hands the departing half-niece of Mr. Spindler. Taking that opportunity to seize the lovely relative by the shoulders and shake her violently, she said: “Oh, yes, and it's all very well for you, Kate, you limb! For you're going away, and will never see Rough and Ready and poor Spindler again. But what am I to do, miss? How am I to face it out? For you know I've got to tell him at least that you're no half-niece of his!”
“Have you?” said the young lady.
“Have I?” repeated the widow impatiently. “Have I? Of course I have! What are you thinking of?” ”

“ People took it naturally; the water went as it had come,—slowly, impassively, noiselessly; a few days of fervid Californian sunshine dried the cabins, and in a week or two the red dust lay again as thickly before their doors as the winter mud had lain. The waters of Rattlesnake Creek dropped below its banks, the stage-coach from Marysville no longer made a detour of the settlement. There was even a singular compensation to this amicable invasion; the inhabitants sometimes found gold in those breaches in the banks made by the overflow. ”

“ Polly's cheeks and eyes flamed. “Yes, I reckon I do,” she said crisply; “it's only a STRANGER here would think of being rude. Good-night, Mr. Starbuck!”
She tripped away after this Parthian shot, yet feeling, even in her triumph, that the conceited fool seemed actually relieved at her departure! And for the first time she now thought that she had seen something in his face that she did not like! But her lazy independence reasserted itself soon, and half an hour later, when she had left Aunt Chloe's cabin, she had regained her self-esteem. ”

“ The boatman thought his secretiveness and reticence only the surliness of his nation, and cared little for a man who never asked for the news, and to whom he brought no letters. The long nights which wrapped the cabin in sea-fog, and at first seemed to heighten the exile's sense of security, by degrees, however, became monotonous, and incited an odd restlessness, which he was wont to oppose by whiskey,—allowed as a part of his stores,—which, while it dulled his sensibilities, he, however, never permitted to interfere with his mechanical duties. ”

“ The Pioneer Coach was toiling up the long grade towards Skinners Pass when Yuba Bill suddenly pulled up, with his feet on the brake.
“Jimminy!” he ejaculated, drawing a deep breath.
The startled passenger beside him on the box followed the direction of his eyes. Through an opening in the wayside pines he could see, a few hundred yards away, a cuplike hollow in the hillside of the vividest green. In the centre a young girl of fifteen or sixteen was dancing and keeping step to the castanet “click” of a pair of “bones,” such as negro minstrels use, held in her hands above her head. ”

“ AN ESMERALDA OF ROCKY CANYON
It is to be feared that the hero of this chronicle began life as an impostor. He was offered to the credulous and sympathetic family of a San Francisco citizen as a lamb, who, unless bought as a playmate for the children, would inevitably pass into the butcher's hands. A combination of refined sensibility and urban ignorance of nature prevented them from discerning certain glaring facts that betrayed his caprid origin. ”

“ Mrs. Rylands was a little frightened. It is sometimes dangerous to meddle with a man's habits, even when he has grown weary of them.
“I thought,” she began hesitatingly, “that it would be more cheerful for you in here, this stormy evening. I thought you might like to put your wet things to dry in the kitchen, and we could sit here together, after supper, alone.”
I am afraid that Mrs. Rylands did not offer all her thoughts. Ever since Mr. Hamlin's departure she had been uneasy and excited, sometimes falling into fits of dejection, and again lighting up into hysterical levity ”

“ The proprietor of this building, Colonel Swinger, had been looked upon by the community as a person quite as remote, old-fashioned, and inconsistent with present progress as the house itself. He was an old Virginian, who had emigrated from his decaying plantation on the James River only to find the slaves, which he had brought with him, freed men when they touched Californian soil; to be driven by Northern progress and “smartness” out of the larger cities into the mountains, to fix himself at last, with the hopeless fatuity of his race, upon an already impoverished settlement ”

“ The San Francisco suburb where his credulous protectors lived was still in a volcanic state of disruption, caused by the grading of new streets through rocks and sandhills. In consequence the roofs of some houses were on the level of the doorsteps of others, and were especially adapted to Billy's performances. One afternoon, to the admiring and perplexed eyes of the nursery, he was discovered standing on the apex of a neighbor's new Elizabethan chimney, on a space scarcely larger than the crown of a hat, calmly surveying the world beneath him. ”

“ Rylands's performances would now be voted slow. Her silk skirt and frilled petticoat were lifted just over her small ankles and tiny bronze-kid shoes. In the course of a pirouette or two, there was a slight further revelation of blue silk stockings and some delicate embroidery, but really nothing more than may be seen in the sweep of a modern waltz. Suddenly the music ceased. Mr. Rylands had left the harmonium and walked over to the hearth. Mrs. Rylands stopped, and came towards him with a flushed, anxious face.
“It don't seem to go right, does it?” she said, with her nervous laugh. ”

“ She looked despairingly around. Something must be done; the steamer might be visible at any moment. Ah, yes,—the telescope! She seized it and swept the horizon. There was a faint streak of haze against the line of sea and sky, abreast the Golden Gate. He had once told her what it meant. It WAS the steamer! A sudden thought leaped into her clear and active brain. If the police boat should chance to see that haze too, and saw no warning signal from the semaphore, they would suspect something. ”

“ He lay there nearly half an hour, and when the sounds had ceased, rose and made his way slowly back to the cabin. He had not gone many yards before he heard the twitter of voices and smothered laughter behind him. He turned; it was Cara and the child,—a girl of six or seven. Cara's face was rosy,—possibly from her bath, and possibly from some shame-faced consciousness. He slackened his pace, and as they ranged beside him said, “Good-morning!”
“Lord!” said Cara, stifling another laugh, “we didn't know you were around; we thought you were always 'tending your telegraph, didn't we, Lucy?” ”

“ A man who could hit out straight from the shoulder had, in the language of the critics, “suthin' in him.” Oddly enough, the crowd that had at first sympathized with Jack now began to admit provocations. His subsequent silence, a disposition when questioned on the subject to smile inanely, and, later, when insidiously asked if he had ever seen Polly dancing with the goat, his bursting into uproarious laughter completely turned the current of opinion against him. The public mind, however, soon became engrossed by a more interesting incident. ”