{
 "id": "ambrose-bierce/californian-summer-pictures",
 "title": "Californian Summer Pictures",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Ambrose Bierce",
 "poet_slug": "ambrose-bierce",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Black Beetles in Amber",
 "book_slug": "black-beetles-in-amber",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": null,
 "container": "Black Beetles in Amber",
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1892,
  "venue": "Black Beetles in Amber (1892)",
  "note": "First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/blackbeetlesinam00bier"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/ambrose-bierce_poetry",
  "file": "black-beetles-in-amber.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4793",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12658",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12977",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/15599",
   "https://archive.org/details/collectedworksof04bierrich",
   "https://archive.org/details/collectedworksof05bierrich",
   "https://archive.org/details/collectedworksof08bierrich",
   "https://archive.org/details/shapesofclay00bier",
   "https://archive.org/details/blackbeetlesinam00bier",
   "https://archive.org/details/literarycalifor05mighgoog",
   "https://archive.org/details/cali07webb"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-20"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 52,
  "n_stanzas": 4,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 56,
  "max_indent": 2
 },
 "site_ready": true,
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 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Assembled in the parlor",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of the place of last resort,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "The smiler and the snarler",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the guests of every sort⁠—",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "The elocution chap",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "With rhetoric on tap;",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "The mimic and the funny dog;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "The social sponge; the money-hog;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Vulgarian and dude;",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "And the prude;",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "The adiposing dame",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "With pimply face aflame;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "The kitten-playful virgin",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Of a half-a-hundred years;",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "The solemn-looking sturgeon",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Of a firm of auctioneers;",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "The widower flirtatious;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "The widow all too gracious;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "The man with a proboscis and a sepulcher beneath.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "One assassin picks his banjo, and another one his teeth.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Now o’ nights the ocean breeze",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Makes the patient flinch,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "For that zephyr bears a sneeze",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In every cubic inch.",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Lo! the admiring population",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Chorusing in sternutation",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A catarrhal acclamation!",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Dimly apparent, through the gloom",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of Market-street’s opaque simoom,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A queue of people, parti-sexed,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Awaiting the command of “Next!”",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A sidewalk booth, a dingy sign:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“Teeth dusted nice⁠—five cents a shine.”",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Wide windy reaches of high stubble field;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A long gray road, bordered with dusty pines;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A wagon moving in a “cloud by day.”",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Two city sportsmen with a dove between,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Breast-high upon a fence and fast asleep⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A solitary dove, the only dove",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In twenty counties, and it sick, or else",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It were not there. Two guns that fire as one,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With thunder simultaneous and loud;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Two shattered human wrecks of blood and bone!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And later, in the gloaming, comes a man⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The worthy local coroner is he,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Renowned all thereabout, and popular",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With many a remain. All tenderly",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Compiling in a game-bag the remains,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He glides into the gloom and fades from sight.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The dove, cured of its ailment by the shock,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Has flown, meantime, on pinions strong and fleet,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To die of age in some far foreign land.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}