Whar have you been for the last three year

That you haven't heard folks tell

How Jimmy Bludso passed in his checks
The night of the Prairie Belle?

He warn't no saint,-them engineers
Is all pretty much alike,—
One wife in Natchez-under-the-Hill
And another one here, in Pike;
A keerless man in his talk was Jim,
And an awkward hand in a row,
But he never flunked, and he never lied,-
I reckon he never knowed how.

And this was all the religion he had:
To treat his engine well;
Never be passed on the river;
To mind the pilot's bell;

And if ever the Prairie Belle took fire,
A thousand times he swore,
He'd hold her nozzle agin the bank
Till the last soul got ashore.

All boats has their day on the Mississip,
And her day come at last,—

The Movastar was a better boat,

But the Belle she wouldn't be passed. And so she came tearin' along that nightThe oldest craft on the line

With a nigger squat on her safety-valve,

And her furnace crammed, rosin and pine.

The fire bust out as she clar'd the bar,

And burnt a hole in the night,

And quick as a flash she turned and made For that willer-bank on the right.

Thar was runnin' and cussin', but Jim yelled out,

Over all the infernal roar,

"I'll hold her nozzle agin the bank

Till the last galoot's ashore."

Through the hot, black breath of the burnin' boat

Jim Bludso's voice was heard,

And they all had trust in his cussedness,

And knowed he would keep his word.
And, sure's you're born, they all got off
Afore the smokestacks fell,-
And Bludso's ghost went up alone
In the smoke of the Prairie Belle.

He warn't no saint, but at jedgement
I'd run my chance with Jim,
'Longside of some pious gentlemen
That wouldn't shook hands with him.
He seen his duty, a dead-sure thing,-
And went for it thar and then;
And Christ ain't a goin' to be too hard
On a man that died for men.

Bret Harte

(Francis) Bret Harte was born August 25, 1839, at Albany, New York. His childhood was spent in various cities of the East. Late in 1853, his widowed mother went to California with a party of relatives, and two months later, when he was fifteen, Bret Harte and his sister followed.

Harte's fame came suddenly. Late in the sixties, he had written a burlesque in rhyme of two Western gamblers trying to fleece a guileless Chinaman who claimed to know nothing about cards but who, it turned out, was scarcely as innocent as he appeared. Harte, in the midst of writing serious poetry, had put the verses aside as too crude and trifling for publication. Some time later, just as The Overland Monthly was

going to press, it was discovered that the form was one page short. Having nothing else on hand, Harte had these rhymes set up. Instead of passing unnoticed, the poem was quoted everywhere; it swept the West and captivated the East. When his volume The Luck of Roaring Camp followed, Harte became not only a national but an international figure.

In 1872 Harte, encouraged by his success, returned to his native East; in 1878 he went to Germany as consul. Two years later he was transferred to Scotland and, after five years there, went to London, where he remained the rest of his life. Harte's later period remains mysteriously shrouded. He never came back to America, not even for a visit; he separated himself from all the most intimate associations of his early life. He died, suddenly, at Camberley, England, May 6, 1902.

"JIM"

Say there! P'r'aps

Some on you chaps

Might know Jim Wild?

Well, no offense:

Thar ain't no sense
In gittin' riled!

Jim was my chum
Up on the Bar:

That's why I come

Down from up yar,

Lookin' for Jim.

Thank ye, sir! You

Ain't of that crew,—
Blest if you are!

Money? Not much:

That ain't my kind;
I ain't no such.

Rum? I don't mind,
Seein' it's you.

What's that you say ?
Why, dern it!-sho!-
No? Yes! By Joe!
Sold!

Sold! Why, you limb,

You ornery,

Derned, old,

Long-legged Jim.

PLAIN LANGUAGE FROM TRUTHFUL JAMES

(Table Mountain, 1870)

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 imply;

But his smile, it was pensive and childlike,
As I frequent remarked to Bill Nye.

It was August the third,

And quite soft was the skies;

Which it might be inferred

That Ah Sin was likewise;

Yet he played it that day upon William
And me in a way I despise.