Bret Harte
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Originally published in Harte's 1875 short-story collection The Tales of the Argonauts, How Santa Claus Came to Simpson's Bar is set in California in the early 1860s and, like the rest of the tales in that collection, features the gold-seeking Argonauts. In this tale, like many of Harte's others, the folly and grit of human existence balance any good intentions, good cheer, or hope, resulting in a more complicated and somewhat bleak ending than is...
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The Argonauts are the gold seekers of 1849 and the years immediately following. These adventurers came from all quarters of the globe and all ranks of society, and they had in common only the possession of the strength and determination necessary to reach the new Colchis. Here they lived, at first, wholly free from the conventional restraints imposed by an organized society, and each man showed himself for what he was. Many of these primitive social...
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The cautious reader will detect a lack of authenticity in the following pages. I am not a cautious reader myself, yet I confess with some concern to the absence of much documentary evidence in support of the singular incident I am about to relate. Disjointed memoranda, the proceedings of ayuntamientos and early departmental juntas, with other records of a primitive and superstitious people, have been my inadequate authorities. It is but just to state,...
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In San Francisco the rainy season had been making itself a reality to the wondering Eastern immigrant. There were short days of drifting clouds and flying sunshine, and long succeeding nights of incessant downpour, when the rain rattled on the thin shingles or drummed on the resounding zinc of pioneer roofs. The shifting sand-dunes on the outskirts were beaten motionless and sodden by the onslaught of consecutive storms; the southeast trades brought...
5) Clarence
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As Clarence Brant, President of the Robles Land Company, and husband of the rich widow of John Peyton, of the Robles Ranche, mingled with the outgoing audience of the Cosmopolitan Theatre, at San Francisco, he elicited the usual smiling nods and recognition due to his good looks and good fortune. But as he hurriedly slipped through the still lingering winter's rain into the smart coupe that was awaiting him, and gave the order Home, the word struck...
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There was no mistake this time: he had struck gold at last! It had lain there before him a moment ago-a misshapen piece of brown-stained quartz, interspersed with dull yellow metal; yielding enough to have allowed the points of his pick to penetrate its honeycombed recesses, yet heavy enough to drop from the point of his pick as he endeavored to lift it from the red earth.
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It was high hot noon on the Casket Ridge. Its very scant shade was restricted to a few dwarf Scotch firs, and was so perpendicularly cast that Leonidas Boone, seeking shelter from the heat, was obliged to draw himself up under one of them, as if it were an umbrella. Occasionally, with a boy's perversity, he permitted one bared foot to protrude beyond the sharply marked shadow until the burning sun forced him to draw it in again with a thrill of satisfaction....
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The defining stories from one of America's great wits In the mid-nineteenth century, the Wild West grabbed ahold of American consciousness and never let go. With the discovery of gold, all eyes and wagons turned westward. This collection of stories brings readers back to the American frontier. In "The Luck of Roaring Camp," when a Native American woman dies in childbirth, the miners take it upon themselves to raise the child. Naming the baby Luck,...
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Harte's protagonist, John Hale, is relieved of his cash by highway robbers while riding in a stagecoach. Hale decides to get together a group of men to catch the thieves, but as the story moves along, many of his co-conspirators seem to have their own, more malevolent, motives.
10) Devil's Ford
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Two young women, the daughters of an engineer who has secretly squandered the family finances in ill-advised mining schemes in Devil's Ford, find themselves romanced by two stockholders, who seek to keep the women ignorant of their father's failure...and end up nearly destroying themselves in the process.
11) Sally Dows
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"Sally Dows," a novella set in Georgia during the Reconstruction, was compared to "Mr. Henry James's analytical studies of conduct" in a contemporary review in the New York Times. In addition to the title work, this 1893 collection includes "The Conspiracy of Mrs. Bunker," "The Transformation of Buckeye Camp," and "Their Uncle from California."
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Society has forgiven Jo Corbin for killing a man, but can he forgive himself? Will the Postmistress lose all in a bid to help a friend escape justice? Will the new teaching assistant's unorthodox ways tame the unruly pioneer children?
These are just three of the nine wonderful short stories from Bret Harte, set in wild and wooly 19th century California
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In addition to the title story, this 1873 collection includes "How Santa Claus Came to Simpson's Bar," "The Princess Bob and Her Friends," "The Iliad of Sandy Bar," "Mr. Thompson's Prodigal," "The Romance of Modrono Hollow," "The Poet of Sierra Flat," and "The Christmas Gift that Came to Rupert."
15) On The Frontier
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Harte-who once rode shotgun on a stagecoach-knew the prospectors, gamblers, and gold-hearted frontier gals who won the West personally. Here are three novellas about the American West by one of the country's first literary superstars: "At the Mission of San Carmel," "A Blue Grass Penelope," and "Left Out on Lone Star Mountain."
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America has always had a fascination with the Wild West, and schoolchildren grow up learning about famous Westerners like Wyatt Earp, Buffalo Bill, Wild Bill Hicock, as well as the infamous shootout at O.K. Corral. Pioneering and cowboys and Indians have been just as popular in Hollywood, with Westerners helping turn John Wayne and Clint Eastwood into legends on the silver screen. HBO's Deadwood, about the historical 19th century mining town on the...
19) Urban Sketches
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Urban Sketches by Bret Harte
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