se
And he sez, "It's too thin!
Such statements as those
It's too late to begin.
There's a MODOC INDICTMENT agin you, O Paleface, and you're goin' in!

"You stole Schonchin's squaw
In the year sixty-two;
It was in sixty-four
That Long Jack you went through,
And you burned Nasty Jim's rancheria, and his wives and his papooses
too.

"This gun in my hand
Was sold me by you
'Gainst the law of the land,
And I grieves it is true!"
And he buried his face in his blanket and wept as he hid it from view.

"But you're tried and condemned,
And skelping's your doom,"
And he paused and he hemmed--
But why this resume?
He was skelped 'gainst the custom of nations, and cut off like a rose
in its bloom.

So I asks without guile,
And I trusts not in vain,
If this is the style
That is going to obtain--
If here's Captain Jack still a-livin', and Nye with no skelp on his
brain?

AN IDYL OF THE ROAD

(SIERRAS, 1876)

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

First Tourist
Second Tourist
Yuba Bill, Driver
A Stranger

FIRST TOURIST

Look how the upland plunges into cover,
Green where the pines fade sullenly away.
Wonderful those olive depths! and wonderful, moreover--

SECOND TOURIST

The red dust that rises in a suffocating way.

FIRST TOURIST

Small is the soul that cannot soar above it,
Cannot but cling to its ever-kindred clay:
Better be yon bird, that seems to breathe and love it--

SECOND TOURIST

Doubtless a hawk or some other bird of prey.
Were we, like him, as sure of a dinner
That on our stomachs would comfortably stay;
Or were the fried ham a shade or two just thinner,
That must confront us at closing of the day:
Then might you sing like Theocritus or Virgil,
Then might we each make a metrical essay;
But verse just now--I must protest and urge--ill
Fits a digestion by travel led astray.

CHORUS OF PASSENGERS

Speed, Yuba Bill! oh, speed us to our dinner!
Speed to the sunset that beckons far away.

SECOND TOURIST

William of Yuba, O Son of Nimshi, hearken!
Check thy profanity, but not thy chariot's play.
Tell us, O William, before the shadows darken,
Where, and,