Skip to main content

Bret Harte

(1836 - 1902)

A Buckeye Hollow Inheritance

The four men on Zip Coon Ledge had not got fairly settled to their morning's work, when one of them ran off to meet the advancing horseman and hand a brown envelope to their messenger. Jackson...

41 min read · Rating: G · Read story

A Convert of the Mission

Stephen Masterton was dragged from the tent of the Tasajara camp meeting and placed in a dilapidated adobe house. There he kept loyal faith with his physician and gave himself up to simple walks...

39 min read · Rating: PG · Read story

A Drift from Redwood Camp

The shiftless, worthless creature was overlooked by the census and ignored by the tax collector, and found himself adrift in a swollen tributary of the Minyo. Elijah Martin succumbed again to the...

37 min read · Rating: PG-13 · Read story

Adventures Of John Longbowe, Yeoman

John Longbowe was miraculously preserved by eating gilly flowers, sulphur, hartes tongue and many stynking herbs, and wearing a fine mask of silk with a mouth piece of aromatic stuff. He was sent...

16 min read · Rating: G · Read story

A Knight-Errant Of The Foothills

Father Felipe read the announcement that Don Jose Sepulvida would preside over the Board of Education in Jonesville. Don Jose Sepulvida, sitting alone in the same apartment, beheld to his...

44 min read · Rating: PG-13 · Read story

A Lonely Ride

As I stepped into the Slumgullion stage I saw a lounger and a third spectator wearily disengaging themselves from one of the Ionic columns of the portico. When I left the dining-room, I stopped at...

11 min read · Rating: G · Read story

A Mother of Five

She was a mother of five children, two of whom were twins, and she never made any difference between them. A little girl carrying her monstrous offspring in her arms appeared before Jack Roper's...

16 min read · Rating: G · Read story

An Ali Baba of the Sierras

Johnny Starleigh found himself again late for school, but his fancy was quickly taken by the traces of a singular accident. A desperado came forward and began to climb a small ridge of outcrop, but...

17 min read · Rating: G · Read story

An Episode of Fiddletown

In 1858, Fiddletown considered Mrs. Tretherick a very pretty woman with only two blemishes: her left cheek bore a small scar left by a single drop of vitriol. Mrs. Tretherick opened the door,...

80 min read · Rating: PG-13 · Read story

A Passage In The Life of Mr. John Oakhurst

Mr. Oakhurst was shocked to find the sun streaming through an inadvertently opened window. He saw a man coming slowly toward him in a carriage and instantly conceived that the carriage was the...

41 min read · Rating: PG-13 · Read story

A Romance of the Line

A man, half his age and a different-looking person, slipped out of his seat and said to the young man, "I do not know Sir Jarge." The young man's face changed and he was introduced as his cousin...

38 min read · Rating: PG-13 · Read story

A Vision of the Fountain

Mr. Jackson Potter halted before the little cottage opposite the great gates of Domesday Park and read aloud: "St. John's gateway". He plunged into a by-path and conceived at once a humorous...

19 min read · Rating: G · Read story