FROM THE CAPTURE OF BLACK BART:

NEARLY A YEAR PASSED BEFORE Black Bart’s next robbery. On July 25, 1878, he stopped the Quincyto- Oroville stage, high in the Sierra Nevada. As the stage descended a hill, a masked man suddenly jumped out in front of the horses, stopping the coach. “Throw out the box,” he demanded while pointing a shotgun at Charley Seavy, the driver. The masked robber escaped with nearly $400 in coins, a $200 diamond ring, and a $25 watch. But he left behind his second and final poem in the broken treasure box, this one written on brown paper:

Here I lay me down to sleep

to wait the coming morrow

perhaps success perhaps defeat

and everlasting sorrow.

Let come what will I’ll try it on

my condition can’t be worse

and if there’s money in that box

tis munny in my purse.

—Black Bart the Po8 [poet]