A Waif of the Plains

by Bret Harte

Overview

Bret Harte is best known for his stories about pioneering life in California. Harte moved to California in 1853 where he worked as a miner, journalist, teacher and messenger. The story begins with two children crossing the plains with a wagon train. "It had appeared so to them for two weeks, always the same and always without the least sense to them of wonder or monotony. When they viewed it from the road, walking beside the wagon, there was only the team itself added to the unvarying picture. One of the wagons bore on its canvas hood the inscription, in large black letters, "Off to California!" on the other "Root, Hog, or Die," but neither of them awoke in the minds of the children the faintest idea of playfulness or jocularity. Perhaps it was difficult to connect the serious men, who occasionally walked beside them and seemed to grow more taciturn and depressed as the day wore on, with this past effusive pleasantry."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781515093978
Publisher:	CreateSpace Publishing
Publication date:	07/15/2015
Pages:	72
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.15(d)

About the Author

Francis Bret Harte (1836 - 1902) was an American short story writer and poet, best remembered for his short fiction featuring miners, gamblers and other romantic figures of the California Gold Rush. In a career spanning more than four decades, he wrote poetry, fiction, plays, lectures, book reviews, editorials and magazine sketches in addition to fiction. As he moved from California to the eastern U.S. to Europe, he incorporated new subjects and characters into his stories but his Gold Rush tales have been most often reprinted, adapted and admired.