BRET HARTE'S STORIES OF THE SIERRA.*

is none of Bret Harte's stories, whether in prose or verse, are the characteristics of his genius more striking than in these of the Sierras. Strange incidents of the wildest life, told with a simplicity that seems to narrow and make light of the strangeness ; a treat- ment the reverse of the usual one, which dwells lovingly on any stray modicum of romance that has happily turned up within the author's experience, enhancing, amplifying, illustrating ; darkening the shadows and intensifying the lights, and taking every precaution that not a single point in the marvellous narration shall escape the attention of the reader. Here, however, though nearly every incident is taken from comparatively lawless lives, where vio- lence and unrestraint are the rule, there is nothing sensational ; no horror, no mystery, no weirdness,—and, indeed, no plot. On the contrary, Bret Harts relates his story with a perspicacity that- looks almost like baldness ; a story wild with a wildness that is clearly of its own nature and not of the dressing-up ; and the

and the pathos which attend it, seem—not the teller's, suggested by his subject, but inherent in the subject, and almost. as if unobserved by the narrator ; the delicate and genial satire alone reminding us of an author ; while, were it not that the point of the story is uniformly in the same position at the end, and thus betrays design, its object, which is always in one sense the same, might escape detection as the motive and inspirer of its author. This object is to illustrate the tenderness which lingers in the roughest natures, and survives under the most destructive influences. and in the most uncongenial circumstances. Such is the tenderness of the morose gold-digger, who for long years continued to remit his own savings, as from his deceased young partner to the latter's mother and sisters, rather than break their hearts by the news of his early death. Such is that of the spend- thrift who had palmed himself upon an old man as his lost son, but who gave up the old man he had learnt to love and all the new hopes of his life, and himself identified the worthless real' son, whom he had believed dead. Such also is that of the melancholy, gaunt Culpepper, who resigned love and life, and allowed himself to be shot, to shield an old reprobate, the guardian of his youth. And such that of the liber-

• Stories of the Sierras. By Bret Harte. Rail and West. By Bret Hark,. London «. Iolm Camden Hotten. tine and gambler who, on the discovery of his chum's dis- tress at his wife's chinged demeanour, withdraws his dangerous presence on the very eve of his elopement with her. It is this belief in some generous, self-denying vein, running through every human soul,—at various depths, no doubt, and differing greatly both in purity and thickness,—that adds a sense of refinement and beauty to these picturesque sketches of a lawless, coarse, passion- ate state of society, such as we, with our highly organised civili- eation, can with difficulty realise. Two stories, alone, though pervaded with the same tenderness of feeling—and one of which contains also the serious element—are of a much quieter kind. Nothing, in fact, could be simpler than the materials out of which "Melons "—a lad's nickname—is constructed ; and half the humour of it consists in the telling of things that no one else would think of telling, in writing about something about which there seems nothing to write—an account, namely, of a little street Arab who haunts a mews, with few clothes and fewer friends, and who does nothing particular, either good or bad, but shuffles about or goes through mild gymnastics, and yet whose friendlessness and childish characteristics are indicated— not described—with such skilful pathos that we are quite sorry when the little chap, taking fright, childlike, at assumed anger, disappears from his imaginary chronicler's horizon :— "His age was about seven. He looked older, from the venerable whiteness of his head, and it was impossible to conjecture his size, as he always wore clothes apparently belonging to some shapely youth of nineteen. A pair of pantaloons, that, when sustained by a single sus- pender, completely equipped him formed his every-day suit. How, with this lavish superfluity of clothing, he managed to perform the sur- prising gymnastic feats it has been my privilege to witness, I have never been able to tell. His 'turning the crab,' and other minor dislocations, were always attended with success. It was not an unusual sight at any hour of the day to find Melons suspended on a line, or to see his venerable head appearing above the roofs of the out-houses. Melons knew the exact height of every fence in the vicinity, its facilities for scaling, and the possibility of seizure on the other side. His more peaeeful and quieter amusements consisted in dragging a disused boiler by a large string, with hideous outcries, to imaginary fires. Melons was not gregarious in his habits. A few youths of his own age sometimes called upon him, but they eventually became abusive, and their visits were more strictly predatory incursions for old bottles and junk, which formed the staple of MoGinnis's Court. Overcome by loneliness one day, Melons inveigled a blind harper into the court. For two hours did that wretched man prosecute his unhallowed calling, unrecompensed, and going round and round the court, apparently under the impression that it was some other place, while Melons surveyed him from an adjoin- ing fence with calm satisfaction. It was this absence of conscientious motives that brought Melons into disrepute with his aristocratic neigh- bours. Orders were issued that no child of wealthy and pious parentage should play with him. This mandate, as a matter of course, invested Melons with a fascinating interest to them. Admiring glances were cad at Melons from nursery windows. Baby fingers beckoned to him. Invitations to tea (on wood and pewter) were lisped to him from aristo- cratic back-yards. It was evident he was looked upon as a pure and noble being, untrammelled by the conventionalities of parentage, and physically as well as mentally exalted above them. One afternoon an nnusnalcomraotion prevailed in the vicinity of McGinnis's Court. Looking from my window, I saw Melons perched on the roof of a stable, pulling up a rope by which one 'Tommy,' an infant scion of an adjacent and wealthy house, was suspended in mid-air. In vain the female relatives of Tommy, congregated in the back-yard, expostulated with Melons ; in vain the unhappy father shook his fist at him. Secure in his position, Melons redoubled his exertions, and at last landed Tommy on the roof. Then it was that the humiliating fact was disclosed that Tommy had been acting in collusion with Melons. He grinned delightedly back at his parents, as if by merit raised to that bad eminence.' Long before the ladder arrived that was to succour him be became the sworn ally of Melons, and I regret to say, incited by the same audacious boy, 'chaffed' his own flesh and blood below him. He was eventually taken, though—of course—Melons escaped. But Tommy was restricted to the window after that, and the companionship was limited to Hi, Melons !' and 'You Tommy !' and Melons, to all practical purposes, lost him for over. I looked afterward to see some signs of sorrow on Melon's part, but in vain ; he buried his grief, if he had any, somewhere in his one voluminous garment."

The Belle of Madrono Hollow and her lover are instances of Bret Harte's power of delicate description when—in its favour and in rare instances—he withholds for a time from the relation of incident. Culpepper is no hero of a novel, no Apollo, as we shall see by the following sketch of his face, and yet from the first we like the long, cadaverous, melancholy youth :—

"It was not an unprepossessing one, albeit a trifle too thin and lank and bilious to be altogether pleasant. The cheekbones were prominent, and the black eyes sunken in their orbits. Straight black hair fell slantwise off a high but narrow forehead, and swept part of a hollow cheek. A long black moustache followed the perpendicular curves of his mouth. It was on the whole a serious, even Quixotic face, but at times It was relieved by a rare smile of such tender and even pathetic sweet- ness, that Miss Jo is reported to have said that, if it would only last through the ceremony, she would have married its possessor on the spot. 'I once told him so,' added that shameless young woman ; 'but the man instantly fell into a settled melancholy, and hasn't smiled since."

Nor less do we appreciate the beauty of the girl of his choice, though it is only suggested to us by its effect on the rude natures of the passers-by :—

" Small wonder that a passing teamster drove his six mules into the wayside ditch and imperilled his load, to keep the dust from her spotless garments ; small wonder that the Lightning Express' withheld its speed and flash to let her pass, and that the expressman, who had never been known to exchange more than rapid monosyllables with his fellow-men, gazed after her with breathless admiration. For she was certainly attractive. In a country where the ornamental sex followed the example of youthful nature, and were prone to overdress and glaring efflorescence, Miss Jo's simple and tasteful raiment added much to the physical charm of, if it did not actually suggest a sentiment to, her presence. It is said that Enchredeck Billy, working in the gulch at the crossing, never saw Miss Folinsbee pass but that he always remarked apologetically to his partner, that he believed he must write a letter home."

There is true genius in that last subtle hint of the softening, humanising influence of beauty on the rough digger, habitually neglecting his deserted, distant home. And here, in a few strokes, is a picture at once of the grand country of the Sierras, and of how the grandest scenes of nature are powerless to impress, in presence of passionate human love :—

" Wonderful power of humanity Far beyond jutted an outlying spur of the Sierra, vast, compact, and silent. Scarcely a hundred yards away a league-long chasm dropped its sheer walls of granite a thousand feet. On every side rose up the serried ranks of pine trees, in whose close-set files centuries of storm and change had wrought no breach. Yet all this seemed to Culpepper to have been planned by an all-wise Providence as the natural background to the figure of a pretty girl in a yellow dress."

One more extract we must give from this story to illustrate Bret Llarte's power of observation, a power which impresses us as that of unconscious perception, rather than of close study. It is a wonder- ful little picture of the airs and graces of a pretty girl believing herself quite alone :—

"It was still early morning, but the sun, with Californian extravagance, had already begun to beat hotly on the little chip hat and blue ribbons, and Miss Jo was obliged to seek the shade of a bypath. Here she received the timid advances of a vagabond yellow dog graciously, until, emboldened by his success, he insisted upon accompanying her ; and, becoming slobberingly demonstrative, threatened her spotless skirt with his dusty paws, when she drove him from her with some slight acerbity, and a stone which haply fell within fifty feet of its destined mark. Having thus proved her ability to defend herself, with characteristic inconsistency she took a small panic, and, gathering her white skirts in one hand, and holding the brim of her hat over her eyes with the other, she ran swiftly at least a hundred yards before she stopped. Than she began picking some ferns and a few wild-flowers still spared to the withered fields, and then a sadden distrust of her small ankles seized her, and she inspected them narrowly for those burrs and bugs and snakes which are supposed to lie in wait for helpless womanhood. Then she plucked some golden heads of wild oats, and with a sudden inspira- tion placed them in her black hair, and then came quite unconsciously upon the trail leading to Madrono Hollow."

Of the broad fun of Mark Twain's type we have scarcely a sign in the far more refined and subtle humour of Bret Harte's stories ; the nearest approach to it is in the account of the old man in search of his son, an old man who "after a hard and wilful youth and maturity, in which he had buried a broken- spirited wife, and driven his son to sea," had "suddenly experienced religion"

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"'I got it in New Orleans in '59,' said Mr. Thompson, with the general suggestion of referring to an epidemic. 'Enter ye the narrer gate. Parse me the beans."

There is a little more of it in the comic poems, in the collection called East and West. The fate of Milton Perkins may serve as a sample :—

" ' Milton Perkins,' said tbe Siren, 'not thy wealth do I admire, But the intellect that flashes from those eyes of opal fire ; And methinks the name thou bearest surely cannot be misplaced, And, embrace me, Mister Perkins! ' Milton Perkins her embraced.

But I grieve to state, that even then, as she was wiping dry The tear of sensibility in Milton Perkins' eye, She prigged his diamond bosom-pin, and that her wipe of lace Did seem to have of chloroform a most suspicious trace."

But the best of these poems does not reach the level of "The Heathen Chiuee," or even of its companions, though "The

Ballad of Mr. Cooke," "The Wonderful Spring of San Joaquin," and especially "Truthful James's Answer to Her Letter," have much of the same dry, satirical humour. The graver ones seem to us to sustain much better Bret Haste's reputation. "Grand- mother Tenterden " is powerful and pathetic, and so, too, is "A Greyport Legend ;" and the elemental protests against Mr.

Seward's proposed annexation of St. Thomas are really grand in their majestic self-assertion and sneering sarcasm.

The two little octavos are very nicely got up as companion volumes, and we strongly recommend them both, though the prose one is our favourite.