“… in the first darkness of the night, a freight train rumbled into the station. When the engine was switching cars on to the side-track, Johnny crept along the side of the train. He pulled open the side-door of an empty box-car and awkwardly and laboriously climbed in. He closed the door. The engine whistled. Johnny was lying down, and in the darkness he smiled.” Jack London

Reading Americana this week: The Sierra Repertory Theater announced they will perform A Murder, A Mystery, and a Marriage in 2014. That prompted me to revisit Mark Twain and other early American writers. These days I hunger for stories with a good moral core.

“How to Tell a Story,” Mark Twain, The Complete Works

This essay makes me want to take a Lit 101 class from Samuel Clemens.

The humorous story is American, the comic story is English, the witty story is French. The humorous story depends for its effect upon the MANNER of the telling; the comic story and the witty story upon the MATTER.

 “Eve’s Diary,” Mark Twain, The Complete Works

A delightful imagining of Eve’s discovery of the wonders of life and the nature of Adam, whom she describes as being tapered like a carrot and possessing low tastes. And even though he ratted her out to God, she loves him for his masculinity. 

• “In a Far Country,” by Jack London, The World of Jack London

The secret to travel is adaptability and good moral character. Writers in London’s time often set the stage before they jumped into the action.

He must not say “Thank you;” he must mean it without opening his mouth, and prove it by responding in kind. In short he must substitute the deed for the word, the spirit for the letter.

It was lack of civility in the inner terrain rather than ignorance in the outer landscape that felled the Incapables in their last winter.

• “A Widow of the Santa Ana Valley,” by Bret Harte, American Literature

TheAmerican Literature site is fast becoming my favorite for ease of reading. Bret Harte is the rare, distinctly Californian writer. The Widow Wade found the bad boys attractive. At the same time, she felt the need to keep her image as a good girl; a story as old as time.

• “Brown of Calaveras,” by Bret Harte, American Literature

Strange to discover the author who captures the spirit of early California so well spent most of his life in Europe. Here we have a deceitful wife, her dissolute husband and gamblin’ Jack, who is not above dalliance but helps his friend pull his life together.

Mrs. Brown, very rosy, large-eyed, and pretty, sat upon the piazza, enjoying the fresh incense of the mountain breeze, and, it is to be feared, another incense which was not so fresh, nor quite as innocent.

Really???

• “The Apostate,” by Jack London, The World of Jack London

This story, first published in Woman’s Home Companion in 1906, raises Dickens in presenting the days in the life of a child factory worker. As this remains an issue, it’s worth a read.

• “The Wife of Chino,” by Frank Norris, The Literature Network

… in affairs such as this, involving women like Felice, there is a distinction between deliberately doing a thing and consciously doing it.

Fortunately, Lockwood figured out in time how “very far he had gone beyond the point where between the two landmarks called right and wrong a line is drawn.