The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales: With Condensed Novels, Spanish and American Legends, and Earlier PapersHarte, Bret
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The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales: With Condensed Novels, Spanish and American Legends, and Earlier Papers
Harte, Bret
Frontier and pioneer life -- West (U.S.) -- Fiction; Western stories
“I see purple moors, glens, masculine women, bare-legged men, priggish
book-worms, more violence, physical excellence, and blood. Always
blood,—and the superiority of physical attainments.”
“And how do you feel now?” said the Goblin.
The Haunted Man shrugged his shoulders. “None the better for being
carried back and asked to sympathize with a barbarous age.”
The Goblin smiled and clutched his arm; they again sped rapidly away
through the black night, and again halted.
“What do you see?” said the Goblin.
“I see a barrack-room, with a mess-table, and a group of intoxicated
Celtic officers telling funny stories, and giving challenges to duel. I
see a young Irish gentleman capable of performing prodigies of valor.
I learn incidentally that the acme of all heroism is the cornetcy of a
dragoon regiment. I hear a good deal of French! No, thank you,” said the
Haunted Man hurriedly, as he stayed the waving hand of the Goblin; “I
would rather _not_ go to the Peninsula, and don’t care to have a private
interview with Napoleon.”
Again the Goblin flew away with the unfortunate man, and from a strange
roaring below them he judged they were above the ocean. A ship hove in
sight, and the Goblin stayed its flight. “Look,” he said, squeezing his
companion’s arm.
The Haunted Man yawned. “Don’t you think, Charles, you’re rather running
this thing into the ground? Of course it’s very moral and instructive,
and all that. But ain’t there a little too much pantomime about it? Come
now!”
“Look!” repeated the Goblin, pinching his arm malevolently. The Haunted
Man groaned.
“Oh, of course, I see her Majesty’s ship Arethusa. Of course I am
familiar with her stern First Lieutenant, her eccentric Captain, her one
fascinating and several mischievous midshipmen. Of course I know it’s
a splendid thing to see all this, and not to be seasick. Oh, there, the
young gentlemen are going to play a trick on the purser. For God’s sake,
let us go,” and the unhappy man absolutely dragged the Goblin away with
him.
When they next halted, it was at the edge of a broad and boundless
prairie, in the middle of an oak opening.
“I see,” said the Haunted Man, without waiting for his cue, but
mechanically, and as if he were repeating a lesson which the Goblin had
taught him,—“I see the Noble Savage. He is very fine to look at! But I
observe, under his war-paint, feathers, and picturesque blanket, dirt,
disease, and an unsymmetrical contour. I observe beneath his inflated
rhetoric deceit and hypocrisy; beneath his physical hardihood cruelty,
malice, and revenge. The Noble Savage is a humbug. I remarked the same
to Mr. Catlin.”
“Come,” said the phantom.
The Haunted Man sighed, and took out his watch. “Couldn’t we do the rest
of this another time?”
“My hour is almost spent, irreverent being, but there is yet a chance
for your reformation. Come!”
Again they sped through the night, and again halted. The sound of
delicious but melancholy music fell upon their ears.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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