THE QUEEN OF THE PIRATE ISLE

by Bret Harte



I first knew her as the Queen of the Pirate Isle. To the best of my
recollection she had no reasonable right to that title. She was only
nine years old, inclined to plumpness and good humor, deprecated
violence, and had never been to sea. Need it be added that she did NOT
live in an island and that her name was Polly?

Perhaps I ought to explain that she had already known other experiences
of a purely imaginative character. Part of her existence had been passed
as a Beggar Child,--solely indicated by a shawl tightly folded round her
shoulders, and chills; as a Schoolmistress, unnecessarily severe; as a
Preacher, singularly personal in his remarks, and once, after reading
one of Cooper's novels, as an Indian Maiden. This was, I believe, the
only instance when she had borrowed from another's fiction. Most of the
characters that she assumed for days and sometimes weeks at a time were
purely original in conception; some so much so as to be vague to the
general understanding. I remember that her personation of a certain Mrs.
Smith, whose individuality was supposed to be sufficiently represented
by a sunbonnet worn wrong side before and a weekly addition to her
family, was never perfectly appreciated by her own circle although she
lived the character for a month. Another creation known as "The Proud
Lady"--a being whose excessive and unreasonable haughtiness was
so pronounced as to give her features the expression of extreme
nausea--caused her mother so much alarm that it had to be abandoned.
This was easily effected. The Proud Lady was understood to have died.