The story moves swiftly on, through
humor, pathos, and tragedy, to its dramatic close. It is given with
perfect literary taste, and naught in its phases of human nature is either
extenuated or set down in malice. The little narrative can be read in a
few minutes, and can never be forgotten. But it is only an episode; and it
is an episode of an episode,--that of the Californian gold-fever. The
story of the Argonauts is only one story, after all, and these tales of
Harte's are but so many facets of the same gem. They are not, however,
like chapters in a romance; there is no such vital connection between them
as develops a cumulative force. We are no more impressed after reading
half a dozen of them than after the first; they are variations of the same
theme. They discover to us no new truth about human nature; they only show
us certain human beings so placed as to act out their naked selves,--to be
neither influenced nor protected by the rewards and screens of
conventional civilization. The affectation and insincerity of our daily
life make such a spectacle fresh and pleasing to us. But we enjoy it
because of its unexpectedness, its separateness, its unlikeness to the
ordinary course of existence.
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