MIGGLES by BRET HARTE
1001 Classic Short Stories & Tales
Jon Hagadorn
4.5 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 14 May 2023
⏱️ 31 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
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Summary
 "Miggles" by Bret Harte
Bret Harte's "Miggles" is one of those frontier stories that begins with rough humor and bad weather, then quietly shifts into something far more human and memorable. A group of travelers, stranded on a storm‑soaked night in the Sierra foothills, seek shelter at a lonely cabin. What they find there is not what they expect.
Inside lives Miggles, a woman whose past is hinted at only in fragments, yet whose strength, generosity, and unconventional life immediately command attention. She cares for a paralyzed man with a devotion that surprises the travelers, challenging their assumptions about respectability, sacrifice, and what it means to live a good life on the margins of society.
Harte blends frontier realism with a gentle emotional pull, revealing character through small gestures, unexpected humor, and the stark honesty of life lived far from polite company. The story becomes a portrait of compassion in a place where compassion is rarely found, and of a woman who has carved out her own kind of dignity in the wilderness.
It's a tale that lingers—quiet, touching, and unmistakably Bret Harte.
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| 0:24.3 | Capital at risk internet banking customers only, account fees and charges apply. The The Welcome back everyone. The one thousand one classic short stories stories entails. This is your host John |
| 1:04.6 | Hagadorn. This episode, Miggles by Brett Hart, is our 2000th episode for |
| 1:10.5 | one thousand one stories podcast network which we started really in January of 2015 and I picked |
| 1:16.4 | Brett Hart because he's one of my favorite authors. This story, Miggles, introduces |
| 1:21.9 | us to a very unusual Western character, |
| 1:24.7 | and nobody was better at telling stories about unusual Western characters than Brett Hart. |
| 1:30.1 | The name of the story is Migles. Hope you enjoy it. |
| 1:35.0 | It begins with the quote, |
| 1:37.0 | I lived at Marysville in 53. Everybody knew me there, |
| 1:41.0 | and everybody had the right to know me. I kept the polka saloon until I came to live with Jim that six years ago. |
| 1:48.0 | Perhaps I've changed some. |
| 1:52.0 | We were eight, including the driver. We had not spoken during the passage of the last |
| 1:56.9 | six miles since the jolting of the heavy vehicle over the roughening road had spoiled the |
| 2:02.1 | judge's last poetical quotation. |
| 2:05.4 | The tall man beside the judge was asleep. |
| 2:08.0 | His arm passed through the swaying strap and his head resting upon it. |
| 2:12.1 | Altogether a limp, helpless looking object, |
... |
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