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Drift from Two Shores By: Bret Harte (1836-1902) |
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by BRET HARTE
CONTENTS THE MAN ON THE BEACH
TWO SAINTS OF THE FOOT HILLS
"JINNY"
ROGER CATRON'S FRIEND
"WHO WAS MY QUIET FRIEND?"
A GHOST OF THE SIERRAS
THE HOODLUM BAND
THE MAN WHOSE YOKE WAS NOT EASY
MY FRIEND, THE TRAMP
THE MAN FROM SOLANO
THE OFFICE SEEKER
A SLEEPING CAR EXPERIENCE
MORNING ON THE AVENUE
WITH THE ENTREES
DRIFT FROM TWO SHORES THE MAN ON THE BEACH I He lived beside a river that emptied into a great ocean. The narrow
strip of land that lay between him and the estuary was covered at high
tide by a shining film of water, at low tide with the cast up offerings
of sea and shore. Logs yet green, and saplings washed away from inland
banks, battered fragments of wrecks and orange crates of bamboo, broken
into tiny rafts yet odorous with their lost freight, lay in long
successive curves, the fringes and overlappings of the sea. At high
noon the shadow of a seagull's wing, or a sudden flurry and gray squall
of sandpipers, themselves but shadows, was all that broke the
monotonous glare of the level sands. He had lived there alone for a twelvemonth. Although but a few miles
from a thriving settlement, during that time his retirement had never
been intruded upon, his seclusion remained unbroken. In any other
community he might have been the subject of rumor or criticism, but the
miners at Camp Rogue and the traders at Trinidad Head, themselves
individual and eccentric, were profoundly indifferent to all other
forms of eccentricity or heterodoxy that did not come in contact with
their own. And certainly there was no form of eccentricity less
aggressive than that of a hermit, had they chosen to give him that
appellation. But they did not even do that, probably from lack of
interest or perception. To the various traders who supplied his small
wants he was known as "Kernel," "Judge," and "Boss." To the general
public "The Man on the Beach" was considered a sufficiently
distinguishing title. His name, his occupation, rank, or antecedents,
nobody cared to inquire. Whether this arose from a fear of reciprocal
inquiry and interest, or from the profound indifference before referred
to, I cannot say. He did not look like a hermit. A man yet young, erect, well dressed,
clean shaven, with a low voice, and a smile half melancholy, half
cynical, was scarcely the conventional idea of a solitary. His
dwelling, a rude improvement on a fisherman's cabin, had all the severe
exterior simplicity of frontier architecture, but within it was
comfortable and wholesome. Three rooms a kitchen, a living room, and
a bedroom were all it contained. He had lived there long enough to see the dull monotony of one season
lapse into the dull monotony of the other. The bleak northwest
trade winds had brought him mornings of staring sunlight and nights of
fog and silence. The warmer southwest trades had brought him clouds,
rain, and the transient glories of quick grasses and odorous beach
blossoms. But summer or winter, wet or dry season, on one side rose
always the sharply defined hills with their changeless background of
evergreens; on the other side stretched always the illimitable ocean as
sharply defined against the horizon, and as unchanging in its hue. The
onset of spring and autumn tides, some changes among his feathered
neighbors, the footprints of certain wild animals along the river's
bank, and the hanging out of party colored signals from the wooded
hillside far inland, helped him to record the slow months. On summer
afternoons, when the sun sank behind a bank of fog that, moving
solemnly shoreward, at last encompassed him and blotted out sea and
sky, his isolation was complete. The damp gray sea that flowed above
and around and about him always seemed to shut out an intangible world
beyond, and to be the only real presence. The booming of breakers
scarce a dozen rods from his dwelling was but a vague and
unintelligible sound, or the echo of something past forever... Continue reading book >>
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Fiction |
Literature |
Short stories |
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