Bret Harte

A Sappho of Green Springs Bret Harte

Book Excerpt: ...he signature initials. The stranger looked disturbed. "Then she ain't about here anywhere?" he said, with a vague gesture. "She don't belong to the office?"The young editor beamed with tolerant superiority: "No, I am sorry to say.""I should like to have got to see her and kinder asked her a few questions," continued the stranger, with the same reflective seriousness. "You see, it wasn't just the rhymin' o' them verses, -- and they kinder sing themselves to ye, don't they?--it wasn't the chyce o' words, --and I reckon they allus hit the idee in the centre shot every time, --it wasn't the idees and moral she sort o' drew out o' what she was tellin', --but it was the straight thing itself, --the truth!""The truth?" repeated the editor."Yes, sir. I've bin there. I've seen all that she's seen in the brush--the little flicks and checkers o' light and shadder down in the brown dust that you wonder how it ever got through the dark of the woods, and that allus seems to slip away like a snake or a l