JIMVILLE 



A BRET HARTE TOWN 



WHEN Mr. Harte found himself with 

 a fresh palette and his particular 

 local color fading from the West, he did 

 what he considered the only safe thing, and 

 carried his young impression away to be 

 worked out untroubled by any newer fact. 

 He should have gone to Jimville. There he 

 would have found cast up on the ore-ribbed 

 hills the bleached timbers of more tales, and 

 better ones. 



You could not think of Jimville as any- 

 thing more than a survival, like the herb- 

 eating, bony-cased old tortoise that pokes 

 cheerfully about those borders some thou- 

 sands of years beyond his proper epoch. 

 105 



