I ’m sitting alone by the fire,
Dressed just as I came from the dance,
In a robe even you would admire,—
It cost a cool thousand in France;
I ’m bediamonded out of all reason,
My hair is done up in a cue:
In short, sir, “the belle of the season”
Is wasting an hour on you.
A dozen engagements I ’ve broken;
I left in the...
Beautiful! Sir, you may say so. Thar isn’t her match in the county,—
Is thar, old gal? Chiquita, my darling, my beauty!
Feel of that neck, sir,—thar ’s velvet! Whoa! Steady—ah, will you? you vixen!
Whoa! I say. Jack, trot her out; let the gentleman look at her paces.
Morgan!—She ain’t nothin’ else, and I ’ve got the papers to prove it.
Sired by...
Above the pines the moon was slowly drifting,
The river sang below;
The dim Sierras, far beyond, uplifting
Their minarets of snow.
The roaring camp-fire, with rude humor, painted
The ruddy tints of health
On haggard face and form that drooped and fainted
In the fierce race for wealth;
Till one arose, and from...
Refugio Mine, Northern Mexico
DRUNK and senseless in his place,
Prone and sprawling on his face,
More like brute than any man
Alive or dead,—
By his great pump out of gear,
Lay the peon engineer,
Waking only just to hear,
Overhead,
Angry tones that called his name,
Oaths and cries of bitter...
A Geological Address
“A human skull has been found in California, in the pliocene formation. This skull is the remnant, not only of the earliest pioneer of this State, but the oldest known human being…. The skull was found in a shaft one hundred and fifty feet deep, two miles from Angel’s, in Calaveras County, by a miner named James Matson, who gave it to Mr. Scribner, a merchant,...
Say there! P’r’aps
Some on you chaps
Might know Jim Wild?
Well,—no offence:
Thar ain’t no sense
In gettin’ riled!
Jim was my chum
Up on the Bar:
That ’s why I come
Down from up thar,
Lookin’ for Jim.
Thank ye, sir! you
Ain’t of that crew,—
Blest if you are!
Money?—Not...
1856
DOW’S Flat. That ’s its name.
And I reckon that you
Are a stranger? The same?
Well, I thought it was true,
For thar isn’t a man on the river as can’t spot the place at first view.
It was called after Dow,—
Which the same was an ass;
And as to the how...
I Reside at Table Mountain, and my name is Truthful James:
I am not up to small deceit or any sinful games;
And I ’ll tell in simple language what I know about the row
That broke up our Society upon the Stanislow.
But first I would remark, that ’t is not a proper plan
For any scientific gent to whale his fellow-man;
And, if a member don’t...
Popularly Known as “The Heathen Chinee”
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:
Which the same I would rise to explain.
Ah Sin was his name;
And I shall not deny
In regard to the same
What that name might...
