Then they say, "Dry up, and sell out"; and the great bankers say, "Name your own price for your stock, and resign." And I say, "There is not gold enough in your bank, in your San Francisco, in the mines of California, that shall buy a Spanish gentleman. When I leave, I leave the stock at my back; I shall take it, nevarre!" Then the banker he say, "And you will go and blab, I suppose?" And then, Pancho, I smile, I pick up my mustache--so! and I say: "Pardon, señor, you haf mistake. The Saltillo haf for three hundred year no stain, no blot upon him. Eet is not now--the last of the race--who shall confess that he haf sit at a board of disgrace and dishonor!" And then it is that the band begin to play, and the animals stand on their hind legs and waltz, and behold, the row he haf begin.
It is the atmosphere of romance, for the mine which had caused all the trouble had been in the family three hundred years and it had become a part of the family itself. When it passed into the hands of the new régime, when his wife, who also was of the new régime, deserted him, then passed Enriquez. The earth that for three hundred years had borne his fathers opened at the earthquake and took him to herself. It was the conception of a true romancer. The work of Bret Harte opened and closed with a vision of romance, a vision worthy even of a Hawthorne.
BRET HARTE. (1839-1902.) _The Lost Galleon and Other Tales_ [Poems], 1867; _Condensed Novels and Other Papers_, 1867; _The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Sketches_, 1870; _Plain Language from Truthful James_, 1870; _The Pliocene Skull_, 1871; _Poems_, 1871; _East and West Poems_, 1871; _The Heathen Chinee and Other Poems_, 1871; _Poetical Works_, 1872; _Mrs. Skagg's Husbands_, 1873; _M'liss: An Idyl of Red Mountain_, 1873; _Echoes of the Foot-Hills_ [Poems], 1875; _Tales of the Argonauts_, 1875; _Gabriel Conroy_, 1876; _Two Men of Sandy Bar_, 1876; _Thankful Blossom_, 1877; _The Story of a Mine_, 1878; _Drift from Two Shores_, 1878; _The Twins of Table Mountain_, 1879; Works in five volumes, 1882; _Flip, and Found at Blazing Star_, 1882; _In the Carquinez Woods_, 1884; _On the Frontier_, 1884; _Maruja_, 1885; _By Shore and Sedge_, 1885; _Snow Bound at Eagle's_, 1885; _A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready_, 1887; _The Crusade of the Excelsior_, 1887; _The Argonauts of North Liberty_, 1888; _A Phyllis of the Sierras_, 1888; _Cressy_, 1889; _The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh_, 1889; _A Waif of the Plains_, 1890; _A Ward of the Golden Gate_, 1890; _A Sappho of Green Springs_, 1891; _Colonel Starbottle's Client_, 1892; _A First Family of Tasajara_, 1892; _Susy: a Story of the Plains_, 1893; _Sally Dows and Other Stories_, 1893; _A Protégé of Jack Hamlin's_, 1894; _The Bell-Ringer of Angel's_, 1894; _In a Hollow of the Hills_, 1895; _Clarence_, 1895; _Barker's Luck_, 1896; _Three Partners_, 1897; _Tales of Trail and Town_, 1898; _Stories in Light and Shadow_, 1898; _Mr. Jack Hamlin's Meditation_, 1899; _From Sandhill to Pine_, 1900; _Under the Redwoods_, 1901; _Openings in the Old Trail_, 1902; _Life of Bret Harte_, by T. Edgar Pemberton, 1903; _Bret Harte_, by Henry W. Boynton, 1905; _The Life of Bret Harte with Some Account of the California Pioneers_, by Henry Childs Merwin, 1911.