s like being rebuked by the Pyramids or by the
starry heavens. There is about Yuba Bill this air of a pugnacious calm,
a stepping back to get his distance for a shattering blow, which is like
that of Dr. Johnson at his best. And the effect is inexpressively
increased by the background and the whole picture which Bret Harte
paints so powerfully; the stormy skies, the sombre gorge, the rocking
and spinning coach, and high above the feverish passengers the huge
dark form of Yuba Bill, a silent mountain of humour.

Another unrecovered and possibly irrecoverable fragment about Yuba Bill,
I recall in a story about his visiting a lad who had once been his
protege in the Wild West, and who had since become a distinguished
literary man in Boston. Yuba Bill visits him, and on finding him in
evening dress lifts up his voice in a superb lamentation over the
tragedy of finding his old friend at last "a 'otel waiter." Then,
vindictively pursuing the satire, he calls fiercely to his young friend,
"Hi, Alphonse! bring me a patty de foy gras, damme." These are the
things that make us love the eminent Bill. He is one of those who
achieve the noblest and most difficult of all the triumphs of a
fictitious character--the triumph of giving us the impression of having
a great deal more in him than appears between the two boards of the
story. Smaller characters give us the impression that the author has
told the whole truth about them, greater characters give the impression
that the author has given of them, not the truth, but merely a few hints
and samples. In some mysterious way we seem to feel that even if
Shakespeare was wrong about Falstaff, Falstaff existed and was real;
that even if Dickens was wrong about Micawber, Micawber existed and was
real. So we feel that there is in the great salt-sea of Yuba Bill's
humour as good fish as ever came out of it. The fleeting jests which
Yuba Bill throws to the coach passengers only give us the opportunity of
fancying and deducing the vast mass of jests which Yuba Bill shares with
his creator.

Bret Harte had to deal with countries and communities of an almost
unexampled laxity, a laxity passing the laxity of savages, the laxity of
civilised men grown savage. He dealt with a life which we in a venerable
and historic society may find it somewhat difficult to realise. It was
the life of an entirely new people, a people who, having no certain
past, could have no certain future. The strangest of all th