Bret Harte

A Sappho of Green Springs Bret Harte

Book Excerpt: ... 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 woo