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!
Thiar ain't no sense In gittin' riled!
Crude at first [the short story] received a literary polish in the press, but its dominant quality remained. It was concise and condense, yet suggestive. It was delightfully extravagant - or a miracle of understatement
Which I wish to remark-- And my language is plain,-- That for ways that are dark And for tricks that are vain, The heathen Chinee is peculiar.
And then, for an old man like me, it's not exactly right,This kind o' playing soldier with no enemy in sight.
When folks find I ain't afeard to speak my mind on their affairs, they kinder guess I'm tellin' the truth about my own.
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.
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
It would seem evident, therefore, that the secret of the American short story was the treatment of characteristic American life, with absolute knowledge of its peculiarities and sympathy with its method...
Never a tear bedims the eye that time and patience will not dry.