Stedman and Hutchinson, comps. A Library of American Literature:
An Anthology in Eleven Volumes. 1891.
Vols. IX–XI: Literature of the Republic, Part IV., 1861–1889
The Society upon the Stanislaus
By Bret Harte (18361902)I
I am not up to small deceit, or any sinful games;
And I’ll tell in simple language what I know about the row
That broke up our society upon the Stanislow.
For any scientific gent to whale his fellow-man,
And, if a member don’t agree with his peculiar whim,
To lay for that same member for to “put a head” on him.
Than the first six months’ proceedings of that same society,
Till Brown of Calaveras brought a lot of fossil bones
That he found within a tunnel near the tenement of Jones.
From those same bones, an animal that was extremely rare:
And Jones then asked the Chair for a suspension of the rules,
Till he could prove that those same bones was one of his lost mules.
It seemed he had been trespassing on Jones’s family vault:
He was a most sarcastic man, this quiet Mr. Brown,
And on several occasions he had cleaned out the town.
To say another is an ass,—at least, to all intent;
Nor should the individual who happens to be meant
Reply by heaving rocks at him to any great extent.
A chunk of old red sandstone took him in the abdomen,
And he smiled a kind of sickly smile, and curled up on the floor,
And the subsequent proceedings interested him no more.
In a warfare with the remnants of a palæozoic age;
And the way they heaved those fossils in their anger was a sin,
Till the skull of an old mammoth caved the head of Thompson in.
For I live at Table Mountain, and my name is Truthful James;
And I’ve told in simple language what I know about the row
That broke up our society upon the Stanislow.