Mliss

"Mliss" is a novella by Bret Harte, first published in the late 19th century, that tells the story of a young woman living in a mining camp in California. The narrative centers on Mliss, a spirited and independent girl, who grapples with her tumultuous upbringing and the harsh realities of life in a frontier society. The plot reveals her relationships with various characters, including a kind-hearted stranger who offers her a chance at a better life. Through rich descriptions and engaging dialogue, Harte explores themes of identity, redemption, and the struggles of women in a male-dominated world. The work highlights Harte's skillful storytelling and his deep empathy for the human condition.

• Short story

								
CHAPTER I

Just where the Sierra Nevada begins to subside in gentler undulations,
and the rivers grow less rapid and yellow, on the side of a great red
mountain, stands "Smith's Pocket." Seen from the red road at sunset,
in the red light and the red dust, its white houses look like the
outcroppings of quartz on the mountainside. The red stage topped
with red-shirted passengers is lost to view half a dozen times in the
tortuous descent, turning up unexpectedly in out-of-the-way places, and
vanishing altogether within a hundred yards of the town. It is probably
owing to this sudden twist in the road that the advent of a stranger
at Smith's Pocket is usually attended with a peculiar circumstance.
Dismounting from the vehicle at the stage office, the too-confident
traveler is apt to walk straight out of town under the impression that
it lies in quite another direction. It is related that one of the tunnel
men, two miles from town, met one of these self-reliant passengers
with a carpetbag, umbrella, Harper's Magazine, and other evidences of
"Civilization and Refinement," plodding along over the road he had just
ridden, vainly endeavoring to find the settlement of Smith's Pocket.

An observant traveler might have found some compensation for his
disappointment in the weird aspect of that vicinity. There were huge
fissures on the hillside, and displacements of the red soil, resembling
more the chaos of some primary elemental upheaval than the work of
man; while halfway down, a long flume straddled its narrow body and
disproportionate legs over the chasm, like an enormous fossil of some
forgotten antediluvian. At every step smaller ditches crossed the road,
hiding in their sallow depths unlovely streams that crept away to a
clandestine union with the great yellow torrent below, and here and
there were the ruins of some cabin with the chimney alone left intact
and the hearthstone open to the skies.

The settlement of Smith's Pocket owed its origin to the finding of a
"pocket" on its site by a veritable Smith. Five thousand dollars were
taken out of it in one half-hour by Smith. Three thousand dollars were
expended by Smith and others in erecting a flume and in tunneling. And
then Smith's Pocket was found to be only a pocket, and subject like
other pockets to depletion. Although Smith pierced the bowels of the
great red mountain, that five thousand dollars was the first and last
return of his labor. The mountain grew reticent of its golden secrets,
and the flume steadily ebbed away the remainder of Smith's fortune.
Then Smith went into quartz-mining; then into quartz-milling; then into
hydraulics and ditching, and then by easy degrees into saloonkeeping.
Presently it was whispered that Smith was drinking a great deal; then it
was known that Smith was a habitual drunkard, and then people began to
think, as they are apt to, that he had never been anything else. But the
settlement of Smith's Pocket, like that of most discoveries, was happily
not dependent on the fortune of its pioneer, and other parties projected
tunnels and found pockets. So Smith's Pocket became a settlement, with
its two fancy stores, its two hotels, its one express office, and its
two first families. Occasionally its one long straggling street was
overawed by the assumption of the latest San Francisco fashions,
imported per express, exclusively to the first families; making outraged
Nature, in the ragged outline of her furrowed surface, look still more
homely, and putting personal insult on that greater portion of the
population to whom the Sabbath, with a change of linen, brought merely
the necessity of cleanliness without the luxury of adornment. Then there
was a Methodist Church, and hard by a Monte Bank, and a little beyond,
on the mountainside, a graveyard; and then a little schoolhouse.

"The Master," as he was known to his little flock, sat alone one night
in the schoolhouse, with some open copybooks before him, carefully
making those bold and full characters which are supposed to combine the
extremes of chirographical and moral excellence, and had got as far as
"Riches are deceitful," and was elaborating the noun with an insincerity
of flourish that was quite in the spirit of his text, when he heard a
gentle tapping. The woodpeckers had been busy about the roof during
the day, and the noise did not disturb his work. But the opening of the
door, and the tapping continuing from the inside, caused him to look
up. He was slightly startled by the figure of a young girl, dirty
and shabbily clad. Still, her great black eyes, her coarse, uncombed,
lusterless black hair falling over her sunburned face, her red arms
and feet streaked with the red soil, were all familiar to him. It was
Melissa Smith--Smith's motherless child.

"What can she want here?" thought the master. Everybody knew "Mliss,"
as she was called, throughout the length and height of Red Mountain.
Everybody knew her as an incorrigible girl. Her fierce, ungovernable
disposition, her mad freaks and lawless character, were in their way
as proverbial as the story of her father's weaknesses, and as
philosophically accepted by the townsfolk. She wrangled with and fought
the schoolboys with keener invective and quite as powerful arm. She
followed the trails with a woodman's craft, and the master had met
her before, miles away, shoeless, stockingless, and bareheaded on the
mountain road. The miners' camps along the stream supplied her with
subsistence during these voluntary pilgrimages, in freely offered alms.
Not but that a larger protection had been previously extended to Mliss.
The Rev. Joshua McSnagley, "stated" preacher, had placed her in the
hotel as servant, by way of preliminary refinement, and had introduced
her to his scholars at Sunday school. But she threw plates occasionally
at the landlord, and quickly retorted to the cheap witticisms of the
guests, and created in the Sabbath school a sensation that was so
inimical to the orthodox dullness and placidity of that institution
that, with a decent regard for the starched frocks and unblemished
morals of the two pink-and-white-faced children of the first families,
the reverend gentleman had her ignominiously expelled. Such were the
antecedents, and such the character of Mliss as she stood before the
master. It was shown in the ragged dress, the unkempt hair, and bleeding
feet, and asked his pity. It flashed from her black, fearless eyes, and
commanded his respect.

"I come here tonight," she said rapidly and boldly, keeping her hard
glance on his, "because I knew you was alone. I wouldn't come here when
them gals was here. I hate 'em and they hates me. That's why. You keep
school, don't you? I want to be teached!"

If to the shabbiness of her apparel and uncomeliness of her tangled hair
and dirty face she had added the humility of tears, the master would
have extended to her the usual moiety of pity, and nothing more. But

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