Bret Harte’s Astronomy
There is a little discrepancy in the poem by Mr. Bret Harte, entitled “Her Letter,” beginning with the lines:
“I’m sitting alone by the fire,
Dressed just as I came from the dance.”
A girl in New York writes to her lover, who is supposed to be a miner in the far West. Yet, in the concluding stanza, she bids him good night, as follows:
“Good-night, here’s the end of my paper,
Good-night, if the longitude please:
For, perhaps, while I’m wasting my taper,
Your sun’s climbing over the trees.”
It is a little difficult to imagine how it could be sunrise in California at the conclusion of an evening party in New York, even though the dancers had prolonged their amusement until compelled to “chase the glowing hours with flying feet.” And, furthermore, this is improbable because the writer is represented as writing by artificial light. Evidently “Old Folinsbee’s Daughter” had had more training in sentiment than in astronomy.