Bret Harte
Bret Harte
Francis Bret Hartewas an American short story writer and poet, best remembered for his short fiction featuring miners, gamblers, and other romantic figures of the California Gold Rush. In a career spanning more than four decades, he wrote poetry, fiction, plays, lectures, book reviews, editorials, and magazine sketches in addition to fiction. As he moved from California to the eastern U.S. to Europe, he incorporated new subjects and characters into his stories, but his Gold Rush tales have been most...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth25 August 1836
CityAlbany, NY
CountryUnited States of America
Don't be too quickTo break bad habits: better stick,Like the Mission folk, to your arsenic.
But, when the goddess' work is done,The woman's still remains.
Hark! I hear the tramp of thousands, And of armèd men the hum; Lo, a nation's hosts have gathered Round the quick alarming drum Saying, Come, Freemen, Come! Ere your heritage be wasted, Said the quick alarming drum.
Each lost day has its patron saint!
And then, for an old man like me, it's not exactly right,This kind o' playing soldier with no enemy in sight.
One big vice in a man is apt to keep out a great many smaller ones.
There is peace in the swamp, though the quiet is Death
Never a tear bedims the eye that time and patience will not dry.
Your voices break and falter in the darkness, Break, falter, and are still.
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!'
Nobody shoulders a rifle in defense of a boarding house.
Never a lip is curved with pain that can't be kissed into smiles again.
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 voce of children gone before. Drawing the soul to its anchorage.
It may be broadly stated that.....of all animals kept for the recreation of mankind the horse is alone capable of exciting a passion that shall be absolutely hopeless.