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Whar have you been for the last three years
That you have n't heard folks tell
How Jimmy Bludso passed in his checks
The night of the Prairie Belle?

He were n'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 would n't be passed. And so she come tearin' along that nightThe oldest craft on the line

With a nigger squat on her safety-valve,

And her furnace crammed, rosin and pine.

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The fire bust out as she clared 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.

There was runnin' and cursin', 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 weren't no saint, but at jedgment
I'd run my chance with Jim,

'Longside of some pious gentlemen

That would n'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.

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FRANCIS BRET HARTE

SAN FRANCISCO

From the Sea

Serene, indifferent of Fate,

5 Thou sittest at the Western Gate;

Upon thy heights so lately won
Still slant the banners of the sun;

Thou seest the white seas strike their tents,
O Warder of two Continents!

And scornful of the peace that flies
Thy angry winds and sullen skies,

Thou drawest all things, small or great,
To thee, beside the Western Gate.

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O lion's whelp, that hidest fast
In jungle growth of spire and mast,

I know thy cunning and thy greed,
Thy hard high lust and wilful deed,

And all thy glory loves to tell
Of specious gifts material.

Drop down, O fleecy Fog, and hide

Her sceptic sneer, and all her pride!