(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; […]

(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 […]

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 […]

(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 […]

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 […]

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, […]

“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’ […]

At nightfall it began to rain. The wind arose too, and also began to buffet a small, struggling, nondescript figure, creeping along the trail over the rocky upland meadow towards Rylands’s rancho. At times its head was hidden in what appeared to be wings thrown upward from its shoulders; at times its broad-brimmed hat was […]

In the early days of the Californian immigration, on the extremest point of the sandy peninsula, where the bay of San Francisco debouches into the Pacific, there stood a semaphore telegraph. Tossing its black arms against the sky,–with its back to the Golden Gate and that vast expanse of sea whose nearest shore was Japan,–it […]

It was growing quite dark in the telegraph-office at Cottonwood, Tuolumne County, California. The office, a box-like enclosure, was separated from the public room of the Miners’ Hotel by a thin partition; and the operator, who was also news and express agent at Cottonwood, had closed his window, and was lounging by his news-stand preparatory […]

It was the sacred hour of noon at Sammtstadt. Everybody was at dinner; and the serious Kellner of “Der Wildemann” glanced in mild reproach at Mr. James Clinch, who, disregarding that fact and the invitatory table d’hote, stepped into the street. For Mr. Clinch had eaten a late breakfast at Gladbach, was dyspeptic and American, […]

Outside of my window, two narrow perpendicular mirrors, parallel with the casement, project into the street, yet with a certain unobtrusiveness of angle that enables them to reflect the people who pass, without any reciprocal disclosure of their own. The men and women hurrying by not only do not know they are observed, but, what […]

CHAPTER I. A CLOUD ON THE MOUNTAIN. They lived on the verge of a vast stony level, upheaved so far above the surrounding country that its vague outlines, viewed from the nearest valley, seemed a mere cloud-streak resting upon the lesser hills. The rush and roar of the turbulent river that washed its eastern base […]

The first intimation given of the eccentricity of the testator was, I think, in the spring of 1854. He was at that time in possession of a considerable property, heavily mortgaged to one friend, and a wife of some attraction, on whose affections another friend held an encumbering lien. One day it was found that […]

It was a slightly cynical, but fairly good-humored crowd that had gathered before a warehouse on Long Wharf in San Francisco one afternoon in the summer of ’51. Although the occasion was an auction, the bidders’ chances more than usually hazardous, and the season and locality famous for reckless speculation, there was scarcely any excitement […]

There should have been snow on the ground to make the picture seasonable and complete, but the Western Barbarian had lived long enough in England to know that, except in the pages of a holiday supplement, this was rarely the accompaniment of a Christmas landscape, and he cheerfully accepted, on the 24th of December, the […]

CHAPTER I. There was probably no earthly reason why the “Poco Mas o Menos” Club of San Francisco should have ever existed, or why its five harmless, indistinctive members should not have met and dined together as ordinary individuals. Still less was there any justification for the gratuitous opinion which obtained, that it was bold, […]

Her father’s house was nearly a mile from the sea, but the breath of it was always strong at the windows and doors in the early morning, and when there were heavy “southwesters” blowing in the winter, the wind brought the sharp sting of sand to her cheek, and the rain an odd taste of […]

CHAPTER I. It was difficult to say if Hays’ farmhouse, or “Hays,” as it was familiarly called, looked any more bleak and cheerless that winter afternoon than it usually did in the strong summer sunshine. Painted a cold merciless white, with scant projections for shadows, a roof of white-pine shingles, bleached lighter through sun and […]

It was growing dark, and the Sonora trail was becoming more indistinct before me at every step. The difficulty had increased over the grassy slope, where the overflow from some smaller watercourse above had worn a number of diverging gullies so like the trail as to be undistinguishable from it. Unable to determine which was […]