"Seeing the Steamer Off"

"Seeing the Steamer Off" is a short story by Bret Harte that captures the poignant moments of farewell at a dockside as a steamer prepares to depart. Set against the backdrop of the American West during the Gold Rush era, the narrative explores themes of love, loss, and the bittersweet nature of goodbyes. Through vivid descriptions and engaging characterizations, Harte illustrates the emotional undercurrents of parting, highlighting the connections and the sense of longing experienced by those left behind. The story reflects Harte's skill in blending humor and pathos while painting a rich picture of life in the frontier.

• Essay

								
I have sometimes thought, while watching the departure of an Eastern
steamer, that the act of parting from friends--so generally one of
bitterness and despondency--is made by an ingenious Californian custom
to yield a pleasurable excitement. This luxury of leave-taking, in which
most Californians indulge, is often protracted to the hauling in of the
gang-plank. Those last words, injunctions, promises, and embraces, which
are mournful and depressing perhaps in that privacy demanded on other
occasions, are here, by reason of their very publicity, of an edifying
and exhilarating character. A parting kiss, blown from the deck of a
steamer into a miscellaneous crowd, of course loses much of that
sacred solemnity with which foolish superstition is apt to invest it. A
broadside of endearing epithets, even when properly aimed and apparently
raking the whole wharf, is apt to be impotent and harmless. A husband
who prefers to embrace his wife for the last time at the door of
her stateroom, and finds himself the centre of an admiring group of
unconcerned spectators, of course feels himself lifted above any feeling
save that of ludicrousness which the situation suggests. The mother,
parting from her offspring, should become a Roman matron under the like
influences; the lover who takes leave of his sweetheart is not apt to
mar the general hilarity by any emotional folly. In fact, this system of
delaying our parting sentiments until the last moment--this removal of
domestic scenery and incident to a public theatre--may be said to be
worthy of a stoical and democratic people, and is an event in our lives
which may be shared with the humblest coal-passer or itinerant vender
of oranges. It is a return to that classic out-of-door experience
and mingling of public and domestic economy which so ennobled the
straight-nosed Athenian.

So universal is this desire to be present at the departure of any
steamer that, aside from the regular crowd of loungers who make their
appearance confessedly only to look on, there are others who take
advantage of the slightest intimacy to go through the leave-taking
formula. People whom you have quite forgotten, people to whom you have
been lately introduced, suddenly and unexpectedly make their appearance
and wring your hands with fervor. The friend, long estranged, forgives
you nobly at the last moment, to take advantage of this glorious
opportunity of "seeing you off." Your bootmaker, tailor, and
hatter--haply with no ulterior motives and unaccompanied by official
friends--visit you with enthusiasm. You find great difficulty in
detaching your relatives and acquaintances from the trunks on which
they resolutely seat themselves, up to the moment when the paddles are
moving, and you are haunted continually by an ill-defined idea that
they may be carried off, and foisted on you--with the payment of their
passage, which, under the circumstances, you could not refuse--for the
rest of the voyage. Your friends will make their appearance at the most
inopportune moments, and from the most unexpected places,--dangling from
hawsers, climbing up paddle-boxes, and crawling through cabin windows at
the imminent peril of their lives. You are nervous and crushed by this
added weight of responsibility. Should you be a stranger, you will find
any number of people on board, who will cheerfully and at a venture take
leave of you on the slightest advances made on your part. A friend
of mine assures me that he once parted, with great enthusiasm and
cordiality, from a party of gentlemen, to him personally unknown, who
had apparently mistaken his state-room. This party,--evidently connected
with some fire company,--on comparing notes on the wharf, being somewhat
dissatisfied with the result of their performances, afterward rendered
my friend's position on the hurricane deck one of extreme peril and
inconvenience, by reason of skilfully projected oranges and apples,
accompanied with some invective. Yet there is certainly something to
interest us in the examination of that cheerless damp closet, whose
painted wooden walls no furniture or company can make habitable, wherein
our friend is to spend so many vapid days and restless nights. The sight
of these apartments, yclept STATE-ROOMS,--Heaven knows why, except it
be from their want of cosiness,--is full of keen reminiscences to most
Californians who have not outgrown the memories of that dreary interval
when, in obedience to nature's wise compensations, homesickness was
blotted out by sea-sickness, and both at last resolved into a chaotic
and distempered dream, whose details we now recognize. The steamer chair
that we used to drag out upon the narrow strip of deck and doze in,
over the pages of a well-thumbed novel; the deck itself, of afternoons,
redolent with the skins of oranges and bananas, of mornings, damp with
salt-water and mopping; the netted bulwark, smelling of tar in the
tropics, and fretted on the weather side with little saline crystals;
the villanously compounded odors of victuals from the pantry, and oil
from the machinery; the young lady that we used to flirt with, and with
whom we shared our last novel, adorned with marginal annotations; our
own chum; our own bore; the man who was never sea-sick; the two events
of the day, breakfast and dinner, and the dreary interval between; the
tremendous importance giver, to trifling events and trifling people; the
young lady who kept a journal; the newspaper, published on board, filled
with mild pleasantries and impertinences, elsewhere unendurable; the
young lady who sang; the wealthy passenger; the popular passenger; the--

[Let us sit down for a moment until this qualmishness, which these
associations and some infectious quality of the atmosphere seem to
produce, has passed away. What becomes of our steamer friends? Why are
we now so apathetic about them? Why is it that we drift away from them
so unconcernedly, forgetting even their names and faces? Why, when we
do remember them, do we look at them so suspiciously, with an undefined
idea that, in the unrestrained freedom of the voyage, they became
possessed of some confidence and knowledge of our weaknesses that we
never should have imparted? Did we make any such confessions? Perish the
thought. The popular man, however, is not now so popular. We have heard
finer voices than that of the young lady who sang so sweetly. Our chum's
fascinating qualities, somehow, have deteriorated on land; so have
those of the fair young novel-reader, now the wife of an honest miner in
Virginia City.]

--The passenger who made so many trips, and exhibited a reckless
familiarity with the officers; the officers themselves, now so
modest and undemonstrative, a few hours later so all-powerful and
important,--these are among the reminiscences of most Californians, and
these are to be remembered among the experiences of our friend. Yet he
feels, as we all do, that his past experience will be of profit to him,
and has already the confident air of an old voyager.

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