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Other documents randomly have
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see the clothes toss, and hear the hard breathing, and know that it
was starving.
Ten, twelve days, a fortnight passed, and it still lived. The
pulsations of the heart, however, were daily growing fainter, and had
now nearly ceased altogether. It was evident that the creature was
dying for want of sustenance. While this terrible life-struggle was
going on, I felt miserable. I could not sleep of nights. Horrible as the
creature was, it was pitiful to think of the pangs it was suffering.
At last it died. Hammond and I found it cold and stiff one
morning in the bed. The heart had ceased to beat, the lungs to
inspire. We hastened to bury it in the garden. It was a strange
funeral, the dropping of that viewless corpse into the damp hole.
The cast of its form I gave to Doctor X——, who keeps it in his
museum in Tenth Street.
As I am on the eve of a long journey from which I may not
return, I have drawn up this narrative of an event the most singular
that has ever come to my knowledge.
NOTE.
[It is rumored that the proprietors of a well-known museum in this city have made
arrangements with Dr. X—— to exhibit to the public the singular cast which Mr.
Escott deposited with him. So extraordinary a history cannot fail to attract
universal attention.]
 FRANCIS BRET HARTE
1839–1902

Bret Harte will always be associated with the California of the “forty-niners.” Gold
digger, teacher, express messenger by turns, he was setting up his own sketches
among the compositors of the San Francisco Golden Era while still in his ’teens.
The sketches brought him into the editorial room, and then to his own chair of the
Weekly Californian, where he vindicated his title by the clever Condensed Novels.
A secretaryship in the United States Branch Mint gave him leisure to gain wide
popularity in verse. On this he mounted to his height. The year 1868 is cardinal in
his life and in the history of American literature; for in that year was founded The
Overland Monthly; and the young man of the hour was made its editor. Its second
number (August, 1868) contained the most widely known, perhaps, of all
American short stories, The Luck of Roaring Camp. The three years of his
editorship include his most popular work, and perhaps his most enduring. He
made the whole country laugh and weep by his verse, he established a magazine
of solid merit, and he gave new life to the short story.
To this growth his removal to the East in 1871 put a period. Continuing his
production pretty steadily on the Atlantic seaboard, in his consulships at Crefeld
(1878) and at Glasgow (1880), and finally during seventeen years in London
(1885–1902), he hardly advanced in art. That his art survived the transplanting is
sufficiently proved by the long list of his books; but it did not thrive. His constant
recurrence to the old themes suggests that he missed the strong western soil.
The familiar tale reprinted here is typical of Bret Harte’s field, geographical and
artistic. His local color no longer keeps the separate value attached to it alike by
many of his admirers and by himself. The California of his stories, sometimes
drawn to the life, as in Johnson’s Old Woman, is often that California, made of
stock desperadoes, stage-drivers, and gulches, which is the delight of melodrama.
Melodramatic Harte is incorrigibly. Mrs. Skaggs is the Dumas adventuress; and the
people of her story can hardly be seen off the boards. The Iliad of Sandy Bar
shows that cheap shifting from farce humor to false pathos which catches the
throats of the gallery. Though in fact he had the knowledge of actual contact, he
saw California as his master Dickens saw London, through a haze of romance. The
stories of both are woven from the suggestions of actual places; but in the
weaving the actuality has faded.
Rather Bret Harte’s best stories prevail by something not extraneous, by
focusing the primary emotions on a single imaginative situation. Poker Flat is
almost allegory—the gambler, the thief, the harlot, the innocents, not so artificially
grouped as in Hawthorne’s Seven Vagabonds, but quite as artfully. It is convincing,
not as a transcript of pioneer society, but as a unified conception of unhindered
human emotions. The same is true of the famous Luck of Roaring Camp, of
Tennessee’s Partner, and of his best work in general. For all its scientific aloofness
and worship of fact, is La maison Tellier ultimately as human as The Outcasts of
Poker Flat?
 THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT
[From “The Overland Monthly,” January, 1869; copyright,
1871, by Fields, Osgood & Co.; 1899, by Bret Harte; reprinted
here by special arrangement with Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin &
Co., authorized publishers of all Bret Harte’s works]

AS Mr. John Oakhurst, gambler, stepped into the main street of

Poker Flat on the morning of the twenty-third of November, 1850, he
was conscious of a change in its moral atmosphere since the
preceding night. Two or three men, conversing earnestly together,
ceased as he approached, and exchanged significant glances. There
was a Sabbath lull in the air, which, in a settlement unused to
Sabbath influences, looked ominous.
Mr. Oakhurst’s calm, handsome face betrayed small concern of
these indications. Whether he was conscious of any predisposing
cause, was another question. “I reckon they’re after somebody,” he
reflected; “likely it’s me.” He returned to his pocket the handkerchief
with which he had been whipping away the red dust of Poker Flat
from his neat boots, and quietly discharged his mind of any further
conjecture.
In point of fact, Poker Flat was “after somebody.” It had lately
suffered the loss of several thousand dollars, two valuable horses,
and a prominent citizen. It was experiencing a spasm of virtuous
reaction, quite as lawless and ungovernable as any of the acts that
had provoked it. A secret committee had determined to rid the town
of all improper persons. This was done permanently in regard of two
men who were then hanging from the boughs of a sycamore in the
gulch, and temporarily in the banishment of certain other
objectionable characters. I regret to say that some of these were
ladies. It is but due to the sex, however, to state that their
impropriety was professional, and it was only in such easily
established standards of evil that Poker Flat ventured to sit in
judgment.
Mr. Oakhurst was right in supposing that he was included in this
category. A few of the committee had urged hanging him as a
possible example, and a sure method of reimbursing themselves
from his pockets of the sums he had won from them. “It’s agin
justice,” said Jim Wheeler, “to let this yer young man from Roaring
Camp—an entire stranger—carry away our money.” But a crude
sentiment of equity residing in the breasts of those who had been
fortunate enough to win from Mr. Oakhurst overruled this narrower
local prejudice.
Mr. Oakhurst received his sentence with philosophic calmness,
none the less coolly that he was aware of the hesitation of his
judges. He was too much of a gambler not to accept Fate. With him
life was at best an uncertain game, and he recognized the usual
percentage in favor of the dealer.
A body of armed men accompanied the deported wickedness of
Poker Flat to the outskirts of the settlement. Besides Mr. Oakhurst,
who was known to be a coolly desperate man, and for whose
intimidation the armed escort was intended, the expatriated party
consisted of a young woman familiarly known as “The Duchess”;
another, who had gained the infelicitous title of “Mother Shipton”;
and “Uncle Billy,” a suspected sluice-robber and confirmed drunkard.
The cavalcade provoked no comments from the spectators, nor was
any word uttered by the escort. Only, when the gulch which marked
the uttermost limit of Poker Flat was reached, the leader spoke
briefly and to the point. The exiles were forbidden to return at the
peril of their lives.
As the escort disappeared, their pent-up feelings found vent in a
few hysterical tears from “The Duchess,” some bad language from
Mother Shipton, and a Parthian volley of expletives from Uncle Billy.
The philosophic Oakhurst alone remained silent. He listened calmly
to Mother Shipton’s desire to cut somebody’s heart out, to the
repeated statements of “The Duchess” that she would die in the
road, and to the alarming oaths that seemed to be bumped out of
Uncle Billy as he rode forward. With the easy good-humor
characteristic of his class, he insisted upon exchanging his own
riding-horse, “Five Spot,” for the sorry mule which the Duchess rode.
But even this act did not draw the party into any closer sympathy.
The young woman reädjusted her somewhat draggled plumes with a
feeble, faded coquetry; Mother Shipton eyed the possessor of “Five
Spot” with malevolence, and Uncle Billy included the whole party in
one sweeping anathema.
The road to Sandy Bar—a camp that, not having as yet
experienced the regenerating influences of Poker Flat, consequently
seemed to offer some invitation to the emigrants—lay over a steep
mountain range. It was distant a day’s severe journey. In that
advanced season, the party soon passed out of the moist, temperate
regions of the foot-hills into the dry, cold, bracing air of the Sierras.
The trail was narrow and difficult. At noon the Duchess, rolling out
of her saddle upon the ground, declared her intention of going no
farther, and the party halted.
The spot was singularly wild and impressive. A wooded
amphitheatre, surrounded on three sides by precipitous cliffs of
naked granite, sloped gently toward the crest of another precipice
that overlooked the valley. It was undoubtedly the most suitable spot
for a camp, had camping been advisable. But Mr. Oakhurst knew
that scarcely half the journey to Sandy Bar was accomplished, and
the party were not equipped or provisioned for delay. This fact he
pointed out to his companions curtly, with a philosophic commentary
on the folly of “throwing up their hand before the game was played
out.” But they were furnished with liquor, which in this emergency
stood them in place of food, fuel, rest, and prescience. In spite of his
remonstrances, it was not long before they were more or less under
its influence. Uncle Billy passed rapidly from a bellicose state into
one of stupor, the Duchess became maudlin, and Mother Shipton
snored. Mr. Oakhurst alone remained erect, leaning against a rock,
calmly surveying them.
Mr. Oakhurst did not drink. It interfered with a profession which
required coolness, impassiveness, and presence of mind, and, in his
own language, he “couldn’t afford it.” As he gazed at his recumbent
fellow-exiles, the loneliness begotten of his pariah-trade, his habits
of life, his very vices, for the first time seriously oppressed him. He
bestirred himself in dusting his black clothes, washing his hands and
face, and other acts characteristic of his studiously neat habits, and
for a moment forgot his annoyance. The thought of deserting his
weaker and more pitiable companions never perhaps occurred to
him. Yet he could not help feeling the want of that excitement
which, singularly enough, was most conducive to that calm
equanimity for which he was notorious. He looked at the gloomy
walls that rose a thousand feet sheer above the circling pines around
him; at the sky, ominously clouded; at the valley below, already
deepening into shadow. And, doing so, suddenly he heard his own
name called.
A horseman slowly ascended the trail. In the fresh, open face of
the new-comer Mr. Oakhurst recognized Tom Simson, otherwise
known as “The Innocent” of Sandy Bar. He had met him some
months before over a “little game,” and had, with perfect
equanimity, won the entire fortune—amounting to some forty dollars
—of that guileless youth. After the game was finished, Mr. Oakhurst
drew the youthful speculator behind the door and thus addressed
him: “Tommy, you’re a good little man, but you can’t gamble worth a
cent. Don’t try it over again.” He then handed him his money back,
pushed him gently from the room, and so made a devoted slave of
Tom Simson.
There was a remembrance of this in his boyish and enthusiastic
greeting of Mr. Oakhurst. He had started, he said, to go to Poker Flat
to seek his fortune. “Alone?” No, not exactly alone; in fact—a giggle
—he had run away with Piney Woods. Didn’t Mr. Oakhurst remember
Piney? She that used to wait on the table at the Temperance House?
They had been engaged a long time, but old Jake Woods had
objected, and so they had run away, and were going to Poker Flat to
be married, and here they were. And they were tired out, and how
lucky it was they had found a place to camp and company. All this
the Innocent delivered rapidly, while Piney—a stout, comely damsel
of fifteen—emerged from behind the pine-tree, where she had been
blushing unseen, and rode to the side of her lover.
Mr. Oakhurst seldom troubled himself with sentiment, still less
with propriety; but he had a vague idea that the situation was not
felicitous. He retained, however, his presence of mind sufficiently to
kick Uncle Billy, who was about to say something, and Uncle Billy
was sober enough to recognize in Mr. Oakhurst’s kick a superior
power that would not bear trifling. He then endeavored to dissuade
Tom Simson from delaying further, but in vain. He even pointed out
the fact that there was no provision, nor means of making a camp.
But, unluckily, “The Innocent” met this objection by assuring the
party that he was provided with an extra mule loaded with
provisions, and by the discovery of a rude attempt at a log-house
near the trail. “Piney can stay with Mrs. Oakhurst,” said the
Innocent, pointing to the Duchess, “and I can shift for myself.”
Nothing but Mr. Oakhurst’s admonishing foot saved Uncle Billy
from bursting into a roar of laughter. As it was, he felt compelled to
retire up the cañon until he could recover his gravity. There he
confided the joke to the tall pine trees, with many slaps of his leg,
contortions of his face, and the usual profanity. But when he
returned to the party, he found them seated by a fire—for the air
had grown strangely chill and the sky overcast—in apparently
amicable conversation. Piney was actually talking in an impulsive,
girlish fashion to the Duchess, who was listening with an interest
and animation she had not shown for many days. The Innocent was
holding forth, apparently with equal effect, to Mr. Oakhurst and
Mother Shipton, who was actually relaxing into amiability. “Is this yer
a d—d picnic?” said Uncle Billy, with inward scorn, as he surveyed
the sylvan group, the glancing fire-light, and the tethered animals in
the foreground. Suddenly an idea mingled with the alcoholic fumes
that disturbed his brain. It was apparently of a jocular nature, for he
felt impelled to slap his leg again and cram his fist into his mouth.
As the shadows crept slowly up the mountain, a slight breeze
rocked the tops of the pine-trees, and moaned through their long
and gloomy aisles. The ruined cabin, patched and covered with pine
boughs, was set apart for the ladies. As the lovers parted, they
unaffectedly exchanged a kiss, so honest and sincere that it might
have been heard above the swaying pines. The frail Duchess and the
malevolent Mother Shipton were probably too stunned to remark
upon this last evidence of simplicity, and so turned without a word to
the hut. The fire was replenished, the men lay down before the door,
and in a few minutes were asleep.
Mr. Oakhurst was a light sleeper. Toward morning he awoke
benumbed and cold. As he stirred the dying fire, the wind, which
was now blowing strongly, brought to his cheek that which caused
the blood to leave it,—snow!
He started to his feet with the intention of awakening the
sleepers, for there was no time to lose. But turning to where Uncle
Billy had been lying, he found him gone. A suspicion leaped to his
brain and a curse to his lips. He ran to the spot where the mules had
been tethered; they were no longer there. The tracks were already
rapidly disappearing in the snow.
The momentary excitement brought Mr. Oakhurst back to the
fire with his usual calm. He did not waken the sleepers. The
Innocent slumbered peacefully, with a smile on his good-humored,
freckled face; the virgin Piney slept beside her frailer sisters as
sweetly as though attended by celestial guardians, and Mr. Oakhurst,
drawing his blanket over his shoulders, stroked his mustachios and
waited for the dawn. It came slowly in a whirling mist of snow-
flakes, that dazzled and confused the eye. What could be seen of
the landscape appeared magically changed. He looked over the
valley, and summed up the present and future in two words,
—“Snowed in!”
 A careful inventory of the provisions, which, fortunately for the
party, had been stored within the hut, and so escaped the felonious
fingers of Uncle Billy, disclosed the fact that with care and prudence
they might last ten days longer. “That is,” said Mr. Oakhurst, sotto
voce to the Innocent, “if you’re willing to board us. If you ain’t—and
perhaps you’d better not—you can wait till Uncle Billy gets back with
provisions.” For some occult reason, Mr. Oakhurst could not bring
himself to disclose Uncle Billy’s rascality, and so offered the
hypothesis that he had wandered from the camp and had
accidentally stampeded the animals. He dropped a warning to the
Duchess and Mother Shipton, who of course knew the facts of their
associate’s defection. “They’ll find out the truth about us all, when
they find out anything,” he added, significantly, “and there’s no good
frightening them now.”
Tom Simson not only put all his worldly store at the disposal of
Mr. Oakhurst, but seemed to enjoy the prospect of their enforced
seclusion. “We’ll have a good camp for a week, and then the snow’ll
melt, and we’ll all go back together.” The cheerful gayety of the
young man and Mr. Oakhurst’s calm infected the others. The
Innocent, with the aid of pine boughs, extemporized a thatch for the
roofless cabin, and the Duchess directed Piney in the reärrangement
of the interior with a taste and tact that opened the blue eyes of
that provincial maiden to their fullest extent. “I reckon now you’re
used to fine things at Poker Flat,” said Piney. The Duchess turned
away sharply to conceal something that reddened her cheek through
its professional tint, and Mother Shipton requested Piney not to
“chatter.” But when Mr. Oakhurst returned from a weary search for
the trail, he heard the sound of happy laughter echoed from the
rocks. He stopped in some alarm, and his thoughts first naturally
reverted to the whiskey, which he had prudently cachéd. “And yet it
don’t somehow sound like whiskey,” said the gambler. It was not
until he caught sight of the blazing fire through the still blinding
storm, and the group around it, that he settled to the conviction that
it was “square fun.”
 Whether Mr. Oakhurst had cachéd his cards with the whiskey as
something debarred the free access of the community, I cannot say.
It was certain that, in Mother Shipton’s words, he “didn’t say cards
once” during that evening. Haply the time was beguiled by an
accordeon, produced somewhat ostentatiously by Tom Simson, from
his pack. Notwithstanding some difficulties attending the
manipulation of this instrument, Piney Woods managed to pluck
several reluctant melodies from its keys, to an accompaniment by
the Innocent on a pair of bone castinets. But the crowning festivity
of the evening was reached in a rude camp-meeting hymn, which
the lovers, joining hands, sang with great earnestness and
vociferation. I fear that a certain defiant tone and Covenanter’s
swing to its chorus, rather than any devotional quality, caused it
speedily to infect the others, who at last joined in the refrain:

“I’m proud to live in the service of the Lord,

And I’m bound to die in His army.”

The pines rocked, the storm eddied and whirled above the
miserable group, and the flames of their altar leaped heavenward, as
if in token of the vow.
At midnight the storm abated, the rolling clouds parted, and the
stars glittered keenly above the sleeping camp. Mr. Oakhurst, whose
professional habits had enabled him to live on the smallest possible
amount of sleep, in dividing the watch with Tom Simson, somehow
managed to take upon himself the greater part of that duty. He
excused himself to the Innocent, by saying that he had “often been
a week without sleep.” “Doing what?” asked Tom. “Poker!” replied
Oakhurst, sententiously; “when a man gets a streak of luck,—nigger-
luck,—he don’t get tired. The luck gives in first. Luck,” continued the
gambler, reflectively, “is a mighty queer thing. All you know about it
for certain is that it’s bound to change. And it’s finding out when it’s
going to change that makes you. We’ve had a streak of bad luck
since we left Poker Flat—you come along, and slap you get into it,
too. If you can hold your cards right along you’re all right. For,”
added the gambler, with cheerful irrelevance,

“‘I’m proud to live in the service of the Lord,

And I’m bound to die in His army.’”

The third day came, and the sun, looking through the white-
curtained valley, saw the outcasts divide their slowly decreasing
store of provisions for the morning meal. It was one of the
peculiarities of that mountain climate that its rays diffused a kindly
warmth over the wintry landscape, as if in regretful commiseration
of the past. But it revealed drift on drift of snow piled high around
the hut; a hopeless, uncharted, trackless sea of white lying below
the rocky shores to which the castaways still clung. Through the
marvellously clear air, the smoke of the pastoral village of Poker Flat
rose miles away. Mother Shipton saw it, and from a remote pinnacle
of her rocky fastness, hurled in that direction a final malediction. It
was her last vituperative attempt, and perhaps for that reason was
invested with a certain degree of sublimity. It did her good, she
privately informed the Duchess. “Just you go out there and cuss,
and see.” She then set herself to the task of amusing “the child,” as
she and the Duchess were pleased to call Piney. Piney was no
chicken, but it was a soothing and ingenious theory of the pair thus
to account for the fact that she didn’t swear and wasn’t improper.
When night crept up again through the gorges, the reedy notes
of the accordeon rose and fell in fitful spasms and long-drawn gasps
by the flickering camp-fire. But music failed to fill entirely the aching
void left by insufficient food, and a new diversion was proposed by
Piney—story-telling. Neither Mr. Oakhurst nor his female companions
caring to relate their personal experiences, this plan would have
failed, too, but for The Innocent. Some months before he had
chanced upon a stray copy of Mr. Pope’s ingenious translation of the
Iliad. He now proposed to narrate the principal incidents of that
poem—having thoroughly mastered the argument and fairly
forgotten the words—in the current vernacular of Sandy Bar. And so
for the rest of that night the Homeric demigods again walked the
earth. Trojan bully and wily Greek wrestled in the winds, and the
great pines in the cañon seemed to bow to the wrath of the son of
Peleus. Mr. Oakhurst listened with quiet satisfaction. Most especially
was he interested in the fate of “Ash-heels,” as the Innocent
persisted in denominating the “swift-footed Achilles.”
So with small food and much of Homer and the accordeon, a
week passed over the heads of the outcasts. The sun again forsook
them, and again from leaden skies the snow-flakes were sifted over
the land. Day by day closer around them drew the snowy circle, until
at last they looked from their prison over drifted walls of dazzling
white, that towered twenty feet above their heads. It became more
and more difficult to replenish their fires, even from the fallen trees
beside them, now half-hidden in the drifts. And yet no one
complained. The lovers turned from the dreary prospect and looked
into each other’s eyes, and were happy. Mr. Oakhurst settled himself
coolly to the losing game before him. The Duchess, more cheerful
than she had been, assumed the care of Piney. Only Mother Shipton
—once the strongest of the party—seemed to sicken and fade. At
midnight on the tenth day she called Oakhurst to her side. “I’m
going,” she said, in a voice of querulous weakness, “but don’t say
anything about it. Don’t waken the kids. Take the bundle from under
my head and open it.” Mr. Oakhurst did so. It contained Mother
Shipton’s rations for the last week, untouched. “Give ’em to the
child,” she said, pointing to the sleeping Piney. “You’ve starved
yourself,” said the gambler. “That’s what they call it,” said the
woman, querulously, as she lay down again, and, turning her face to
the wall, passed quietly away.
The accordeon and the bones were put aside that day, and
Homer was forgotten. When the body of Mother Shipton had been
committed to the snow, Mr. Oakhurst took The Innocent aside, and
showed him a pair of snow-shoes, which he had fashioned from the
old pack-saddle. “There’s one chance in a hundred to save her yet,”
he said, pointing to Piney; “but it’s there,” he added, pointing toward
Poker Flat. “If you can reach there in two days she’s safe.” “And
you?” asked Tom Simson. “I’ll stay here,” was the curt reply.
The lovers parted with a long embrace. “You are not going,
too?” said the Duchess, as she saw Mr. Oakhurst apparently waiting
to accompany him. “As far as the cañon,” he replied. He turned
suddenly, and kissed the Duchess, leaving her pallid face aflame,
and her trembling limbs rigid with amazement.
Night came, but not Mr. Oakhurst. It brought the storm again
and the whirling snow. Then the Duchess, feeding the fire, found
that some one had quietly piled beside the hut enough fuel to last a
few days longer. The tears rose to her eyes, but she hid them from
Piney.
The women slept but little. In the morning, looking into each
other’s faces, they read their fate. Neither spoke; but Piney,
accepting the position of the stronger, drew near and placed her arm
around the Duchess’s waist. They kept this attitude for the rest of
the day. That night the storm reached its greatest fury, and, rending
asunder the protecting pines, invaded the very hut.
Toward morning they found themselves unable to feed the fire,
which gradually died away. As the embers slowly blackened, the
Duchess crept closer to Piney, and broke the silence of many hours:
“Piney, can you pray?” “No, dear,” said Piney, simply. The Duchess,
without knowing exactly why, felt relieved, and, putting her head
upon Piney’s shoulder, spoke no more. And so reclining, the younger
and purer pillowing the head of her soiled sister upon her virgin
breast, they fell asleep.
The wind lulled as if it feared to waken them. Feathery drifts of
snow, shaken from the long pine boughs, flew like white-winged
birds, and settled about them as they slept. The moon through the
rifted clouds looked down upon what had been the camp. But all
human stain, all trace of earthly travail, was hidden beneath the
spotless mantle mercifully flung from above.
 They slept all that day and the next, nor did they waken when
voices and footsteps broke the silence of the camp. And when
pitying fingers brushed the snow from their wan faces, you could
scarcely have told from the equal peace that dwelt upon them,
which was she that had sinned. Even the Law of Poker Flat
recognized this, and turned away, leaving them still locked in each
other’s arms.
But at the head of the gulch, on one of the largest pine trees,
they found the deuce of clubs pinned to the bark with a bowie knife.
It bore the following, written in pencil, in a firm hand:
†
BENEATH THIS TREE
LIES THE BODY
OF
JOHN OAKHURST,
WHO STRUCK A STREAK OF BAD LUCK
ON THE 23D OF NOVEMBER, 1850,
AND
HANDED IN HIS CHECKS
ON THE 7TH DECEMBER, 1850.
†

And pulseless and cold, with a Derringer by his side and a bullet in
his heart, though still calm as in life, beneath the snow lay he who
was at once the strongest and yet the weakest of the outcasts of
Poker Flat.
 ALBERT FALVEY WEBSTER
1848–1876

Readers of “Appleton’s Journal” in the early ’70’s must have looked forward from
week to week to the stories of Albert Webster. For, often as he wrote, he always
had a story to tell. It might be merely a romance of incident; it was usually a
situation of very human significance; it always showed narrative instinct. With this
native sense he was experimenting variously toward his art, while through his
investigations of prisons, courts, and medical advice he was developing a serious
and definite philosophy of life. But his own life was doomed. The quest of health,
very like Stevenson’s, may be read in the titles of his descriptive essays during
1875 and 1876: Spring Days in Aiken, From New York to Aspinwall, The Isthmus
and Panama, Up the Mexican Coast, Winter Days in California, etc. On the steamer
from San Francisco to Honolulu he died, and was buried in the Pacific. He was
betrothed to Una, eldest daughter of Hawthorne.
Of his many stories perhaps the most striking is An Operation in Money
(“Appleton’s Journal,” September 27, 1873, volume x, page 387); the nicest in
adjustment, Miss Eunice’s Glove, printed below. The Daphne (“Appleton’s Journal,”
1873, volume x, page 290) and A Fool’s Moustache (ibid., 1874, volume xii, page
259) read as if sketched for the stage. How he kept at his work appears
pathetically in his leaving behind a tale laid at Santa Barbara and published after
his death, The Owner of “Lara” (ibid., 1877, new series, volume ii, page 350).
 MISS EUNICE’S GLOVE
[From the “Atlantic Monthly,” July, 1873]

I
FOR a long time blithe and fragile Miss Eunice, demure, correct in
deportment, and yet not wholly without enthusiasm, thought that
day the unluckiest in her life on which she first took into her hands
that unobtrusive yet dramatic book, “Miss Crofutt’s Missionary Labors
in the English Prisons.”
It came to her notice by mere accident, not by favor of
proselyting friends; and such was its singular material, that she at
once devoured it with avidity. As its title suggests, it was the history
of the ameliorating endeavors of a woman in criminal society, and it
contained, perforce, a large amount of tragic and pathetic incident.
But this last was so blended and involved with what Miss Eunice
would have skipped as commonplace, that she was led to digest the
whole volume,—statistics, philosophy, comments, and all. She
studied the analysis of the atmosphere of cells, the properties and
waste of wheaten flour, the cost of clothing to the general
government, the whys and wherefores of crime and evil-doing; and
it was not long before there was generated within her bosom a fine
and healthy ardor to emulate this practical and courageous pattern.
She was profoundly moved by the tales of missionary labors
proper. She was filled with joy to read that Miss Crofutt and her
lieutenants sometimes cracked and broke away the formidable husks
which enveloped divine kernels in the hearts of some of the
wretches, and she frequently wept at the stories of victories gained
over monsters whose defences of silence and stolidity had suddenly
fallen into ruin above the slow but persistent sapping of constant
kindness. Acute tinglings and chilling thrills would pervade her entire
body when she read that on Christmas every wretch seemed to
become for that day, at least, a gracious man; that the sight of a few
penny tapers, or the possession of a handful of sweet stuff, or a
spray of holly, or a hot-house bloom, would appear to convert the
worst of them into children. Her heart would swell to learn how they
acted during the one poor hour of yearly freedom in the prison-
yards; that they swelled their chests; that they ran; that they took
long strides; that the singers anxiously tried their voices, now grown
husky; that the athletes wrestled only to find their limbs stiff and
their arts forgotten; that the gentlest of them lifted their faces to the
broad sky and spent the sixty minutes in a dreadful gazing at the
clouds.
The pretty student gradually became possessed with a rage. She
desired to convert some one, to recover some estray, to reform
some wretch.
She regretted that she lived in America, and not in England,
where the most perfect rascals were to be found; she was sorry that
the gloomy, sin-saturated prisons which were the scenes of Miss
Crofutt’s labors must always be beyond her ken.
There was no crime in the family or the neighborhood against
which she might strive; no one whom she knew was even austere;
she had never met a brute; all her rascals were newspaper rascals.
For aught she knew, this tranquillity and good-will might go on
forever, without affording her an opportunity. She must be denied
the smallest contact with these frightful faces and figures, these bars
and cages, these deformities of the mind and heart, these curiosities
of conscience, shyness, skill, and daring; all these dramas of
reclamation, all these scenes of fervent gratitude, thankfulness, and
intoxicating liberty,—all or any of these things must never come to
be the lot of her eyes; and she gave herself up to the most poignant
regret.
But one day she was astonished to discover that all of these
delights lay within half an hour’s journey of her home; and
moreover, that there was approaching an hour which was annually
set apart for the indulgence of the inmates of the prison in question.
She did not stop to ask herself, as she might well have done, how it
was that she had so completely ignored this particular institution,
which was one of the largest and best conducted in the country,
especially when her desire to visit one was so keen; but she
straightway set about preparing for her intended visit in a manner
which she fancied Miss Crofutt would have approved, had she been
present.
She resolved, in the most radical sense of the word, to be alive.
She jotted on some ivory tablets, with a gold pencil, a number of
hints to assist her in her observations. For example: “Phrenological
development; size of cells; ounces of solid and liquid; tissue-
producing food; were mirrors allowed? if so, what was the effect?
jimmy and skeleton-key, character of; canary birds: query, would not
their admission into every cell animate in the human prisoners a
similar buoyancy? to urge upon the turnkeys the use of the Spanish
garrote in place of the present distressing gallows; to find the
proportion of Orthodox and Unitarian prisoners to those of other
persuasions.” But besides these and fifty other similar memoranda,
the enthusiast cast about her for something practical to do.
She hit upon the capital idea of flowers. She at once ordered
from a gardener of taste two hundred bouquets, or rather nosegays,
which she intended for distribution among the prisoners she was
about to visit, and she called upon her father for the money.
Then she began to prepare her mind. She wished to define the
plan from which she was to make her contemplations. She settled
that she would be grave and gentle. She would be exquisitely careful
not to hold herself too much aloof, and yet not to step beyond the
bounds of that sweet reserve that she conceived must have been at
once Miss Crofutt’s sword and buckler.
Her object was to awaken in the most abandoned criminals a
realization that the world, in its most benignant phase, was still open
to them; that society, having obtained a requital for their
wickedness, was ready to embrace them again on proof of their
repentance.
She determined to select at the outset two or three of the most
remarkable monsters, and turn the full head of her persuasions
exclusively upon them, instead of sprinkling (as it were) the whole
community with her grace. She would arouse at first a very few, and
then a few more, and a few more, and so on ad infinitum.
It was on a hot July morning that she journeyed on foot over the
bridge which led to the prison, and there walked a man behind her
carrying the flowers.
Her eyes were cast down, this being the position most significant
of her spirit. Her pace was equal, firm, and rapid; she made herself
oblivious of the bustle of the streets, and she repented that her
vanity had permitted her to wear white and lavender, these making a
combination in her dress which she had been told became her well.
She had no right to embellish herself. Was she going to the races, or
a match, or a kettle-drum, that she must dandify herself with
particular shades of color? She stopped short, blushing. Would Miss
Cro——. But there was no help for it now. It was too late to turn
back. She proceeded, feeling that the odds were against her.
She approached her destination in such a way that the prison
came into view suddenly. She paused with a feeling of terror. The
enormous gray building rose far above a lofty white wall of stone,
and a sense of its prodigious strength and awful gloom overwhelmed
her. On the top of the wall, holding by an iron railing, there stood a
man with a rifle trailing behind him. He was looking down into the
yard inside. His attitude of watchfulness, his weapon, the unseen
thing that was being thus fiercely guarded, provoked in her such a
revulsion that she came to a standstill.
What in the name of mercy had she come here for? She began
to tremble. The man with the flowers came up to her and halted.
From the prison there came at this instant the loud clang of a bell,
and succeeding this a prolonged and resonant murmur which
seemed to increase. Miss Eunice looked hastily around her. There
were several people who must have heard the same sounds that
reached her ears, but they were not alarmed. In fact, one or two of
them seemed to be going to the prison direct. The courage of our
philanthropist began to revive. A woman in a brick house opposite
suddenly pulled up a window-curtain and fixed an amused and
inquisitive look upon her.
This would have sent her into a thrice-heated furnace. “Come, if
you please,” she commanded the man, and she marched upon the
jail.
She entered at first a series of neat offices in a wing of the
structure, and then she came to a small door made of black bars of
iron. A man stood on the farther side of this, with a bunch of large
keys. When he saw Miss Eunice he unlocked and opened the door,
and she passed through.
She found that she had entered a vast, cool, and lofty cage, one
hundred feet in diameter; it had an iron floor, and there were several
people strolling about here and there. Through several grated
apertures the sunlight streamed with strong effect, and a soft breeze
swept around the cavernous apartment.
Without the cage, before her and on either hand, were three
more wings of the building, and in these were the prisoners’
corridors.
At the moment she entered, the men were leaving their cells,
and mounting the stone stairs in regular order, on their way to the
chapel above. The noisy files went up and down and to the right and
to the left, shuffling and scraping and making a great tumult. The
men were dressed in blue, and were seen indistinctly through the
lofty gratings. From above and below and all around her there came
the metallic snapping of bolts and the rattle of moving bars; and so
significant was everything of savage repression and impending
violence, that Miss Eunice was compelled to say faintly to herself, “I
am afraid it will take a little time to get used to all this.”
She rested upon one of the seats in the rotunda while the chapel
services were being conducted, and she thus had an opportunity to
regain a portion of her lost heart. She felt wonderfully dwarfed and
belittled, and her plan of recovering souls had, in some way or other,
lost much of its feasibility. A glance at her bright flowers revived her
a little, as did also a surprising, long-drawn roar from over her head,
to the tune of “America.” The prisoners were singing.
Miss Eunice was not alone in her intended work, for there were
several other ladies, also with supplies of flowers, who with her
awaited until the prisoners should descend into the yard and be let
loose before presenting them with what they had brought. Their
common purpose made them acquainted, and by the aid of chat and
sympathy they fortified each other.
Half an hour later the five hundred men descended from the
chapel to the yard, rushing out upon its bare broad surface as you
have seen a burst of water suddenly irrigate a road-bed. A hoarse
and tremendous shout at once filled the air, and echoed against the
walls like the threat of a volcano. Some of the wretches waltzed and
spun around like dervishes, some threw somersaults, some folded
their arms gravely and marched up and down, some fraternized,
some walked away pondering, some took off their tall caps and sat
down in the shade, some looked towards the rotunda with
expectation, and there were those who looked towards it with
contempt.
There led from the rotunda to the yard a flight of steps. Miss
Eunice descended these steps with a quaking heart, and a turnkey
shouted to the prisoners over her head that she and others had
flowers for them.
 No sooner had the words left his lips, than the men rushed up
pell-mell.
This was a crucial moment.
There thronged upon Miss Eunice an army of men who were
being punished for all the crimes in the calendar. Each individual
here had been caged because he was either a highwayman, or a
forger, or a burglar, or a ruffian, or a thief, or a murderer. The
unclean and frightful tide bore down upon our terrified missionary,
shrieking and whooping. Every prisoner thrust out his hand over the
head of the one in front of him, and the foremost plucked at her
dress.
She had need of courage. A sense of danger and contamination
impelled her to fly, but a gleam of reason in the midst of her
distraction enabled her to stand her ground. She forced herself to
smile, though she knew her face had grown pale.
She placed a bunch of flowers into an immense hand which
projected from a coarse blue sleeve in front of her; the owner of the
hand was pushed away so quickly by those who came after him that
Miss Eunice failed to see his face. Her tortured ear caught a rough
“Thank y’, miss!” The spirit of Miss Crofutt revived in a flash, and her
disciple thereafter possessed no lack of nerve.
She plied the crowd with flowers as long as they lasted, and a
jaunty self-possession enabled her finally to gaze without flinching at
the mass of depraved and wicked faces with which she was
surrounded. Instead of retaining her position upon the steps, she
gradually descended into the yard, as did several other visitors. She
began to feel at home; she found her tongue, and her color came
back again. She felt a warm pride in noticing with what care and
respect the prisoners treated her gifts; they carried them about with
great tenderness, and some compared them with those of their
friends.
Presently she began to recall her plans. It occurred to her to
select her two or three villains. For one, she immediately pitched
upon a lean-faced wretch in front of her. He seemed to be old, for
his back was bent and he leaned upon a cane. His features were
large, and they bore an expression of profound gloom. His head was
sunk upon his breast, his lofty conical cap was pulled over his ears,
and his shapeless uniform seemed to weigh him down, so infirm was
he.
Miss Eunice spoke to him. He did not hear; she spoke again. He
glanced at her like a flash, but without moving; this was at once
followed by a scrutinizing look. He raised his head, and then he
turned toward her gravely.
The solemnity of his demeanor nearly threw Miss Eunice off her
balance, but she mastered herself by beginning to talk rapidly. The
prisoner leaned over a little to hear better. Another came up, and
two or three turned around to look. She bethought herself of an
incident related in Miss Crofutt’s book, and she essayed its recital. It
concerned a lawyer who was once pleading in a French criminal
court in behalf of a man whose crime had been committed under the
influence of dire want. In his plea he described the case of another
whom he knew who had been punished with a just but short
imprisonment instead of a long one, which the judge had been at
liberty to impose, but from which he humanely refrained. Miss
Eunice happily remembered the words of the lawyer: “That man
suffered like the wrong-doer that he was. He knew his punishment
was just. Therefore there lived perpetually in his breast an impulse
toward a better life which was not suppressed and stifled by the five
years he passed within the walls of the jail. He came forth and
began to labor. He toiled hard. He struggled against averted faces
and cold words, and he began to rise. He secreted nothing, faltered
at nothing, and never stumbled. He succeeded; men took off their
hats to him once more; he became wealthy, honorable, God-fearing.
I, gentlemen, am that man, that criminal.” As she quoted this last
declaration, Miss Eunice erected herself with burning eyes and
touched herself proudly upon the breast. A flush crept into her
cheeks, and her nostrils dilated, and she grew tall.
 She came back to earth again, and found herself surrounded
with the prisoners. She was a little startled.
“Ah, that was good!” ejaculated the old man upon whom she
had fixed her eyes. Miss Eunice felt an inexpressible sense of delight.
Murmurs of approbation came from all of her listeners, especially
from one on her right hand. She looked around at him pleasantly.
But the smile faded from her lips on beholding him. He was
extremely tall and very powerful. He overshadowed her. His face was
large, ugly, and forbidding; his gray hair and beard were cropped
close, his eyebrows met at the bridge of his nose and overhung his
large eyes like a screen. His lips were very wide, and, being turned
downwards at the corners, they gave him a dolorous expression. His
lower jaw was square and protruding, and a pair of prodigious white
ears projected from beneath his sugar-loaf cap. He seemed to take
his cue from the old man, for he repeated his sentiment.
“Yes,” said he, with a voice which broke alternately into a roar
and a whisper, “that was a good story.”
“Y-yes,” faltered Miss Eunice, “and it has the merit of being t-
rue.”
He replied with a nod, and looked absently over her head while
he rubbed the nap upon his chin with his hand. Miss Eunice
discovered that his knee touched the skirt of her dress, and she was
about to move in order to destroy this contact, when she
remembered that Miss Crofutt would probably have cherished the
accident as a promoter of a valuable personal influence, so she
allowed it to remain. The lean-faced man was not to be mentioned
in the same breath with this one, therefore she adopted the superior
villain out of hand.
She began to approach him. She asked him where he lived,
meaning to discover whence he had come. He replied in the same
mixture of roar and whisper, “Six undered un one, North Wing.”
 Miss Eunice grew scarlet. Presently she recovered sufficiently to
pursue some inquiries respecting the rules and customs of the
prison. She did not feel that she was interesting her friend, yet it
seemed clear that he did not wish to go away. His answers were
curt, yet he swept his cap off his head, implying by the act a certain
reverence, which Miss Eunice’s vanity permitted her to exult at.
Therefore she became more loquacious than ever. Some men came
up to speak with the prisoner, but he shook them off, and remained
in an attitude of strict attention, with his chin on his hand, looking
now at the sky, now at the ground, and now at Miss Eunice.
In handling the flowers her gloves had been stained, and she
now held them in her fingers, nervously twisting them as she talked.
In the course of time she grew short of subjects, and, as her listener
suggested nothing, several lapses occurred; in one of them she
absently spread her gloves out in her palms, meanwhile wondering
how the English girl acted under similar circumstances.
Suddenly a large hand slowly interposed itself between her eyes
and her gloves, and then withdrew, taking one of the soiled trifles
with it.
She was surprised, but the surprise was pleasurable. She said
nothing at first. The prisoner gravely spread his prize out upon his
own palm, and after looking at it carefully, he rolled it up into a tight
ball and thrust it deep in an inner pocket.
This act made the philanthropist aware that she had made
progress. She rose insensibly to the elevation of patron, and she
made promises to come frequently and visit her ward and to look in
upon him when he was at work; while saying this she withdrew a
little from the shade his huge figure had supplied her with.
He thrust his hands into his pockets, but he hastily took them
out again. Still he said nothing and hung his head. It was while she
was in the mood of a conqueror that Miss Eunice went away. She felt
a touch of repugnance at stepping from before his eyes a free
woman, therefore she took pains to go when she thought he was
not looking.
She pointed him out to a turnkey, who told her he was expiating
the sins of assault and burglarious entry. Outwardly Miss Eunice
looked grieved, but within she exulted that he was so emphatically a
rascal.
When she emerged from the cool, shadowy, and frowning prison
into the gay sunlight, she experienced a sense of bewilderment. The
significance of a lock and a bar seemed greater on quitting them
than it had when she had perceived them first. The drama of
imprisonment and punishment oppressed her spirit with tenfold
gloom now that she gazed upon the brilliancy and freedom of the
outer world. That she and everybody around her were permitted to
walk here and there at will, without question and limit, generated
within her an indefinite feeling of gratitude; and the noise, the
colors, the creaking wagons, the myriad voices, the splendid variety
and change of all things excited a profound but at the same time a
mournful satisfaction.
Midway in her return journey she was shrieked at from a
carriage, which at once approached the sidewalk. Within it were four
gay maidens bound to the Navy-Yard, from whence they were to
sail, with a large party of people of nice assortment, in an
experimental steamer, which was to be made to go with kerosene
lamps, in some way. They seized upon her hands and cajoled her.
Wouldn’t she go? They were to sail down among the islands
(provided the oil made the wheels and things go round), they were
to lunch at Fort Warren, dine at Fort Independence, and dance at
Fort Winthrop. Come, please go. Oh, do! The Germanians were to
furnish the music.
Miss Eunice sighed, but shook her head. She had not yet got the
air of the prison out of her lungs, nor the figure of her robber out of
her eyes, nor the sense of horror and repulsion out of her
sympathies.
 At another time she would have gone to the ends of the earth
with such a happy crew, but now she only shook her head again and
was resolute. No one could wring a reason from her, and the
wondering quartet drove away.

II
Before the day went, Miss Eunice awoke to the disagreeable fact
that her plans had become shrunken and contracted, that a certain
something had curdled her spontaneity, and that her ardor had flown
out at some crevice and had left her with the dry husk of an intent.
She exerted herself to glow a little, but she failed. She talked
well at the tea-table, but she did not tell about the glove. This
matter plagued her. She ran over in her mind the various doings of
Miss Crofutt, and she could not conceal from herself that that lady
had never given a glove to one of her wretches; no, nor had she
ever permitted the smallest approach to familiarity.
Miss Eunice wept a little. She was on the eve of despairing.
In the silence of the night the idea presented itself to her with a
disagreeable baldness. There was a thief over yonder that possessed
a confidence with her.
They had found it necessary to shut this man up in iron and
stone, and to guard him with a rifle with a large leaden ball in it.
This villain was a convict. That was a terrible word, one that
made her blood chill.
She, the admired of hundreds and the beloved of a family, had
done a secret and shameful thing of which she dared not tell. In
these solemn hours the madness of her act appalled her.
She asked herself what might not the fellow do with the glove?
Surely he would exhibit it among his brutal companions, and
perhaps allow it to pass to and fro among them. They would laugh
and joke with him, and he would laugh and joke in return, and no
doubt he would kiss it to their great delight. Again, he might go to
her friends, and, by working upon their fears and by threatening an
exposure of her, extort large sums of money from them. Again,
might he not harass her by constantly appearing to her at all times
and all places and making all sorts of claims and demands? Again,
might he not, with terrible ingenuity, use it in connection with some
false key or some jack-in-the-box, or some dark-lantern, or
something, in order to effect his escape; or might he not tell the
story times without count to some wretched curiosity-hunters who
would advertise her folly all over the country, to her perpetual
misery?
She became harnessed to this train of thought. She could not
escape from it. She reversed the relation that she had hoped to hold
toward such a man, and she stood in his shadow, and not he in
hers.
In consequence of these ever-present fears and sensations,
there was one day, not very far in the future, that she came to have
an intolerable dread of. This day was the one on which the sentence
of the man was to expire. She felt that he would surely search for
her; and that he would find her there could be no manner of doubt,
for, in her surplus of confidence, she had told him her full name,
inasmuch as he had told her his.
When she contemplated this new source of terror, her peace of
mind fled directly. So did her plans for philanthropic labor. Not a
shred remained. The anxiety began to tell upon her, and she took to
peering out of a certain shaded window that commanded the square
in front of her house. It was not long before she remembered that
for good behavior certain days were deducted from the convicts’
terms of imprisonment. Therefore, her ruffian might be released at a
moment not anticipated by her. He might, in fact, be discharged on
any day. He might be on his way towards her even now.
She was not very far from right, for suddenly the man did
appear.
 He one day turned the corner, as she was looking out at the
window fearing that she should see him, and came in a diagonal
direction across the hot, flagged square.
Miss Eunice’s pulse leaped into the hundreds. She glued her eyes
upon him. There was no mistake. There was the red face, the evil
eyes, the large mouth, the gray hair, and the massive frame.
What should she do? Should she hide? Should she raise the sash
and shriek to the police? Should she arm herself with a knife? or—
what? In the name of mercy, what? She glared into the street. He
came on steadily, and she lost him, for he passed beneath her. In a
moment she heard the jangle of the bell. She was petrified. She
heard his heavy step below. He had gone into the little reception
room beside the door. He crossed to a sofa opposite the mantel. She
then heard him get up and go to a window, then he walked about,
and then sat down; probably upon a red leather seat beside the
window.
Meanwhile the servant was coming to announce him. From some
impulse, which was a strange and sudden one, she eluded the maid,
and rushed headlong upon her danger. She never remembered her
descent of the stairs. She awoke to cool contemplation of matters
only to find herself entering the room.
Had she made a mistake, after all? It was a question that was
asked and answered in a flash. This man was pretty erect and self-
assured, but she discerned in an instant that there was needed but
the blue woollen jacket and the tall cap to make him the wretch of a
month before.
He said nothing. Neither did she. He stood up and occupied
himself by twisting a button upon his waistcoat. She, fearing a threat
or a demand, stood bridling to receive it. She looked at him from top
to toe with parted lips.
He glanced at her. She stepped back. He put the rim of his cap
in his mouth and bit it once or twice, and then looked out at the