Harte was paid for setting type only, but he lightened his labors and entertained himself by contributing literature to the paper,Ⓐtextual note uninvited. The editor and proprietor, Joe LawrenceⒺexplanatory note, never saw Harte’s manuscripts, because there weren’t any. Harte spun his literature [begin page 119] out of his head while at work at the case, and set it up as he spun. The Ⓐtextual note Golden Era was ostensibly and ostentatiously a literary paper, but its literature was pretty feeble and sloppy, and only exhibited the literary forms, without really being literatureⒶtextual note. Mr. Swain, the Superintendent of the Mint, noticed a new note in that Golden Era orchestra—a new and fresh and spirited note that rose above that orchestra’s mumbling confusion and was recognizable as music. He asked Joe Lawrence who the performer was, and Lawrence told him. It seemed to Mr. Swain a shame that Harte should be wasting himself in such a place and on such a pittance,Ⓐtextual note so he took him away, made him his private secretary,Ⓐtextual note on a good salary, with little or nothing to do,Ⓐtextual note and told him to follow his own bent and develop his talent. Harte was willing, and the development began.

Bret Harte was one of the pleasantest men I have ever known. He was also one of the unpleasantest men I have ever known. He was showy, meretricious, insincere; and he constantly advertised these qualities in his dress. He was distinctly pretty, in spite of the fact that his face was badly pitted with smallpox. In the days when he could afford it—and in the days when he couldn’tⒶtextual note—his clothes always exceeded the fashion by a shade or two. He was always conspicuously a little more intensely fashionable than the fashionablest of the rest of the community. He had good taste in clothes. With all his conspicuousness there was never anything reallyⒶtextual note loud norⒶtextual note offensive about them. They always had a singleⒶtextual note smart little accent, effectively located,Ⓐtextual note and that accent would have distinguished Harte from any other of the ultra-fashionablesⒶtextual note. Oftenest it was his necktie. Always it was of a single color, and intense. Most frequently, perhaps, it was crimson—a flash of flame under his chin; or it was indigo blue, and as hot and vivid as if one of those splendid and luminous Brazilian butterflies had lighted there. Harte’s dainty self-complacencies extended to his carriage,Ⓐtextual note and gait. His carriage was graceful and easy, hisⒶtextual note gait was of the mincing sort, but was the right gait for him, for an unaffected one would not have harmonized with the rest of the man and the clothes.

He hadn’t a sincere fibre in him. I think he was incapable of emotion, for I think he had nothing to feel with. I think his heart was merely a pump, and had no other function.Ⓐtextual note I am almost moved to say I know it had no other function. I knew him intimately in the days when he was private secretary on the second floorⒶtextual note and I a fading and perishing reporter on the third, with Smiggy McGlural looming doomfully in the near distance. I knew him intimately when he came East five years later, in 1870, to take the editorship of the proposed Lakeside Magazine, inⒶtextual note Chicago, and crossed the continent through such a prodigious blaze of national interest and excitement that one might have supposed he was the Viceroy of India on a progress, or Halley’s comet come again after seventy-five years of lamented absenceⒺexplanatory note.

I knew him pretty intimately thenceforth until he crossed the ocean to be ConsulⒶtextual note, first at CrefeldⒶtextual note, in Germany, and afterwardsⒶtextual note in GlasgowⒺexplanatory note. He never returned to America. When he died, in London, he had been absent from America and from his wife and daughtersⒶtextual note twenty-six yearsⒺexplanatory note.

This is the very Bret Harte whose pathetics, imitated from Dickens, used to be a godsend to the farmers of two hemispheres on account of the freshets of tearsⒶtextual note they [begin page 120] compelled. He said to me once, with a cynical chuckle, that he thought he had masteredⒶtextual note the art of pumping up the tear of sensibility.Ⓐtextual note The idea conveyed was that the tear of sensibilityⒶtextual note was oil, and that by luck he had struck it.Ⓐtextual note

Harte told me once, when he was spending a business-fortnightⒶtextual note in my house in Hartford, that his fame was an accident—an accident that he much regretted for a while. He said he had written “The Heathen Chinee” for amusement; then had thrown it into the waste-basket; that presently there was a call for copy to finish out the Overland Monthly and let it get to press. He had nothing else, so he fished the “Chinee” out of the basket and sent that. As we all remember, it created an explosion of delight whose reverberations reached the last confines of Christendom,Ⓐtextual note and Harte’s name, from being obscure to invisibility in the one week, was as notorious and as visible, in the next, as if it had been painted on the sky in letters of astronomical magnitude. He regarded this fame as a disaster, because he was already at work on such things as “The Luck of Roaring Camp,” a loftier grade of literature, a grade which he had been hoping to presently occupy with distinction in the sight of the world. “The Heathen Chinee” did obstruct that dream, but not for long. It was presently replaced by the finer glory of “The Luck of Roaring Camp,”Ⓔexplanatory note “Tennessee’s Partner,” and those other felicitous imitations of Dickens.Ⓐtextual note In the San Franciscan days Bret Harte was by no means ashamed when he was praised as being a successful imitator of Dickens; he was proud of it. I heard him say, myself, that he thought he was the best imitator ofⒶtextual note Dickens in America, a remark which indicates a fact, to wit:Ⓐtextual note that there were a great many people in America, at that time, who were ambitiously and undisguisedly imitating Dickens. His long novel, “Gabriel Conroy,”Ⓐtextual note Ⓔexplanatory note is as much like Dickens as if Dickens had written it himself.

It is a pity that we cannot escape from life when we are young. When Bret Harte started East in his new-born glory, thirty-six years ago, with the eyes of the world upon him, he had lived all of his life that was worth theⒶtextual note living. He had lived all of his life that was to be respectworthyⒶtextual note. He had lived all of his life that was to be worthy ofⒶtextual note his own respect.Ⓐtextual note He was entering upon a miserableⒶtextual note career of poverty, debt, humiliation, shame, disgrace,Ⓐtextual note bitterness, and a world-wideⒶtextual note fame which must have often been odious to him, since it made his poverty and the shabbiness of his character conspicuous beyond the power of any art to mercifully hide them. There was a happy Bret Harte, a contented Bret Harte, an ambitious Bret Harte, a hopeful Bret Harte, a bright, cheerful, easy-laughingⒶtextual note Bret Harte,Ⓐtextual note a Bret Harte to whom it was a bubbling and effervescent joy to be alive. That Bret Harte died in San Francisco. It was the corpse of that Bret Harte that swept in splendor across the continent; that refused to go to the Chicago banquet given in itsⒶtextual note honor because there had been a breachⒶtextual note of etiquette—a carriage had not been sent for it;Ⓐtextual note that resumed its eastwardⒶtextual note journeyⒶtextual note leaving behind the grand scheme of the Lakeside Monthly in sorrowful collapse; that undertook to give all the product of its brainⒶtextual note for one year to the Atlantic Monthly Ⓐtextual note for ten thousand dollars—a stupendous sum in those days—furnished nothing worth speaking of for the great pay, but collected and spent the money before the year was outⒺexplanatory note, and thenⒶtextual note began aⒶtextual note dismal and harassing death-in-lifeⒶtextual note of borrowing from men and living on womenⒶtextual note which was to cease only at the grave.Ⓐtextual note