In these days things are happening which bring Bret Harte to my mind again; they rake up memories of him which carry me back thirty and forty years. He had a curious adventure once, when he was a young chap new to the Pacific coastⒶtextual note and floating around seeking bread and butter. He told me some of his experiences of that early day. For a while he taught a school in the lively gold-mining camp of Yreka, and at the same time he added a trifle to his income by editing the little weekly local journalⒺexplanatory note for the pair of journeymen typesetters who owned it. His duties as editor required him to read proof. Once a galley-slip was laid before him which consisted of one of those old-time obituaries which were so dismally popular all over the United States when we were still a soft-hearted and sentimental people. There was half a column of the obituary, and it was built upon the regulation plan; that is to say, it was made up of superlatives—superlatives wherewith the writer tried to praise Mrs. Thompson, the deceased, to the summit of her merit, the result being a flowery, overheated, and most extravagant eulogy, and closing with that remark which was never missing from the regulation obituary: “Our loss is her eternal gain.” In the proof Harte found this observation: “Even in Yreka her chastity was conspicuous.” Of course that word was a misprint for charity Ⓐtextual note, but Harte didn’t think of that; he knew a printer’s mistake had been made, and he also knew that a reference to [begin page 416] the manuscript would determine what it was; therefore he followed proof-reader custom, and with his pen indicated in the usual way that the manuscript must be examined. It was a simple matter, and took only a moment of his time; he drew a black line under the word chastity Ⓐtextual note, and in the margin he placed a question-mark enclosed in parentheses. It was a brief way of saying “There is something the matter with this word; examine the manuscript and make the necessary correction.” But there is another proof-reader law which he overlooked. That law says that when a word is not emphatic enough you must draw a line under it, and this will require the printer to reinforce it by putting it in italics. When Harte took up the paper in the morning and looked at that obituary he took only one glance; then he levied on a mule that was not being watched and cantered out of town, knowing well that in a very little while there was going to be a visit from the widower, with his gun. In the obituary the derelict observation now stood in this form: “Even in Yreka her chastity Ⓐtextual note was conspicuous (?)”—a form which turned the thing into a ghastly and ill-timed sarcasm!Ⓐtextual note

I am reminded, in a wide roundabout way, of another of Harte’s adventures,Ⓐtextual note by a remark in a letter lately received from Tom Fitch, whom Joe Goodman crippled in the duel—for Tom Fitch is still alive, although inhabiting Arizona. After wandering for years and years all about the planet, Fitch has gone back to his early lovesⒺexplanatory note, the sand, the sage-brush, and the jackass rabbit; and these things, and the old-time ways of the natives, have refreshed his spirit and restored to him his lost youth. Those friendly people slap him on the shoulder and call him—well, never mind what they call him; it might offend your ears, but it does Fitch’sⒶtextual note heart good. He knows its deep meanings; he recognizes the affection that is back of it, and so it is music to his spirit, and he is grateful. When “The Luck of Roaring Camp” burst upon the worldⒺexplanatory note Harte became instantly famous; his name and his praises were upon every lip. One day he had occasion to go to Sacramento. When he went ashore there he forgot to secure a berth for the return trip. When he came down to the landing, in the late afternoon, he realized that he had made a calamitous blunder: apparently all Sacramento was proposing to go down to San Francisco; there was a queueⒶtextual note of men which stretched from the purser’s office down the gangplank, across the levee, and up the street out of sight. Harte had one hope: inasmuch as in theatres, operas, steamboats, and steamships, half a dozen choice places are always reserved to be conferred upon belated clients of distinction, perhaps his name might procure for him one of those reserved places, if he could smuggle his card to the purser; so he edged his way along the queueⒶtextual note and at last stood shoulder to shoulder with a vast and rugged miner from the mountains, who had his revolvers in his belt, whose great slouch hat overshadowed the whiskered face of a buccaneer, and whose raiment was splashed with clay from his chin down to his boot-tops. The queueⒶtextual note was drifting slowly by the purser’s wicket, and each member of it was hearing, in his turn, the fatal words: “No berths left; not even floor space.” The purser was just saying it to the truculent big miner when Harte passed his card in. The purser exclaimed—passing a key—Ⓐtextual note

“Ah, Mr. Bret Harte, glad to see you, sir!Ⓐtextual note Take the whole stateroom, sir.”

The bedless miner cast a scowl upon Harte which shed a twilight gloom over the [begin page 417] whole region, and frightened that author to such a degree that his keyⒶtextual note and its wooden tagⒶtextual note rattled in his quaking hand; then he disappeared from the miner’s view, and sought seclusion and safety behind the life-boats and such things on the hurricane-deck. But neverthelessⒶtextual note the thing happened which he was expecting—the miner soon appeared up there and went peering around; whenever he approached dangerously near, Harte shifted his shelter and hid behind a new one. This went on without unhappy accident for half an hour, but at last failure came:Ⓐtextual note Harte made a miscalculation; he crept cautiously out from behind a life-boat and came face to face with the miner!Ⓐtextual note He felt that it was an awful situation, a fatal situation, but it was not worth while to try to escape, so he stood still and waited for his doom. The miner said, sternly,

“Are you Bret Harte?”

Harte confessed it, in a feeble voice.

“Did you write that ‘Luck of Roaring Camp’?”

Harte confessed again.

“Sure?”

“Yes”—in a whisper.

The miner burst outⒶtextual note fervently and affectionately,

“ Son Ⓐtextual note of a ———! Put it there!” and he gripped Harte’s hand in his mighty talons and mashed it.

Tom Fitch knows that welcome phrase, and the love and admiration that purge it of its earthiness and make it divine.

In the early days I liked Bret Harte, and so did the others, but by and by I got over it; so, also, did the others. He couldn’t keep a friend permanently. He was bad, distinctly bad; he had no feeling, and he had no conscience. His wife was all that a good woman, a good wife, a good mother, and a good friend, can be; but when he went to Europe as ConsulⒶtextual note he left her and his little children behind, and never came back again from that time until his deathⒺexplanatory note, twenty-sixⒶtextual note years later.

[begin page 418]

Bret Harte continued: his visit to Newport; his several visits to Mr. Clemens in Hartford; once to borrow money, once to finish a story, once to write a play with Mr. Clemens; at the close of the latter visit Mr. Clemens gives him his opinion of his character.

Then he had what he thought was a happy idea: he compacted the notes into a bale, and sent them to Harte on the 24th of December ’77 as a Christmas present; and with them he sent a note begging Harte to allow him this privilege because of the warm, and kind, and brotherlyⒶtextual note feeling which prompted it. Per next day’s mail Harte fired the bale back at him, accompanying it with a letter which was all afire with insulted dignity, and which formally and by irrevocable edictⒶtextual note permanently annulled the existing friendship. But there was nothing in it about paying the notes some time or other.

When Harte made his spectacular progress across the continent, in 1870Ⓔexplanatory note, he took up his residence at Newport, Rhode Island, that breeding-place—that stud-farmⒶtextual note, so to speak—of aristocracy; aristocracy of the American type; that auction mart where the English nobilities come to trade hereditary titles for American girls and cash. Within a twelvemonth he had spent his ten thousand dollars, and he shortly thereafter left Newport, in debt to the butcher, the baker, and the rest, and took up his residence with his wife and his little children in New York. I will remark that during Harte’s sojourns in Newport and Cohasset he constantly went to dinners among the fashionables where he was the only male guest whose wife had not been invited. There are some harsh terms in our language, but I am not acquainted with any that is harsh enough to properly characterize a husband who will act like that.

When Harte had been living in New York two or three months he came to Hartford and stopped over night with us. He said he was without money, and without a prospect; that he owed the New York butcher and baker two hundred and fifty dollars, and could get no further credit from them; also he was in debt for his rent, and his landlord was threatening to turn his little family into the street. He had come to me to ask for a loan of two hundred and fifty dollars. I said that that would relieve only the butcher and baker part of the situation, with the landlord still hanging over him; he would better accept of five hundred, which he didⒺexplanatory note. He employed the rest of his visit in delivering himself of sparkling sarcasms about our house, our furniture, and the rest of our domestic arrangements.

Howells was saying, yesterday, that Harte was one of the most delightful persons he had ever met, and one of the wittiest. He said that there was a charm about himⒶtextual note that made a person forget, for the time being, his meannesses, his shabbinessesⒶtextual note and his dishonesties, and almost forgive them. Howells is right about Harte’s bright wit, but he had probably never made a search into the character of it. The character of it spoiled it; it possessed no breadth and no variety; it consisted solely of sneers and sarcasms; when there was nothing to sneer at, Harte did not flash and sparkle, and was not more entertaining than the rest of us.

Once he wrote a play with a perfectly delightful Chinaman in itⒺexplanatory note—a play which would have succeeded if any one else had written it; but Harte had earned the enmity of the New [begin page 419] York dramatic critics by freely and frequently charging them with being persons who never said a favorable thing about a new play except when the favorable thing was boughtⒶtextual note and paid for beforehand. The critics were waiting for him, and when his own play was put upon the stage they attacked it with joy,Ⓐtextual note they abused it and derided it remorselessly. It failed, and Harte believed that the critics were answerable for the failureⒺexplanatory note. By and by he proposed that he and I should collaborate in a play in which each of us shouldⒶtextual note introduce several characters and handle them. He came to Hartford and remained with us two weeksⒺexplanatory note. He was a man who could never persuade himself to do a stroke of work until his credit was gone, and all his money, and the wolf was at his door; then he could sit down and work harder—until temporary relief was secured—than any man I have ever seen.

ToⒶtextual note digress for a moment. He came to us once, just upon the verge of Christmas, to stay a day and finish a short story for the New York Sun called “Faithful Blossom”Ⓔexplanatory note—if my memory serves me. He was to have a hundred and fifty dollars for the story, in any case, but Mr. DanaⒺexplanatory note had said he should have two hundred and fifty if he finished it in time for Christmas use. Harte had reached the middle of his story, but his time-limitⒶtextual note was now so brief that he could afford no interruptions, wherefore he had come to us to get away from the persistent visits of his creditors. He arrived aboutⒶtextual note dinner time. He said his time was so short that he must get to work straightway after dinner; then he went on chatting in serenity and comfort all through dinner, and afterward by the fire in the library until ten o’clock; then Mrs. Clemens went to bed, and my hot whisky punch was brought; also a duplicate of it for Harte. The chatting continued. I generally consume only one hot whisky, and allow myself until eleven o’clock for this function; but Harte kept on pouring and pouring, and consuming and consuming, until one o’clock; then I excused myself and said good nightⒶtextual note. He asked if he could have a bottle of whisky in his room. We rang up GeorgeⒺexplanatory note, and he furnished it. It seemed to me that he had already swallowed whisky enough to incapacitate him for work, but it was not so; moreover, there were no signs upon him that his whisky had had a dulling effect upon his brain. He went to his room and worked the rest of the night, with his bottle of whisky and a big wood fire for comfort. At five orⒶtextual note six in the morning he rang for George; his bottle was empty, and he ordered another; between thenⒶtextual note and nine he drank the whole of the added quart, and then came to breakfast not drunk, not even tipsy, but quite at himself, and alert and animated. His story was finished; finished within the time-limitⒶtextual note, and the extra hundred dollars was secured. I wondered what a story would be like that had been completed in circumstances like these; an hour later I was to find out.

At ten o’clock the young girls’ club—by name theⒶtextual note Saturday Morning Club—arrived in our libraryⒺexplanatory note. I was booked to talk to the lassies,Ⓐtextual note but I asked Harte to take my place and read his story. He began it, but it was soon plain that he was like most other people—he didn’t know how to read; therefore I took it from him and read it myself. The last half of that story was written under the unpromising conditions which I have described; it is a story which I have never seen mentioned in print, and I think it is quite unknown, but it is my conviction that it belongs at the very top of Harte’s literature.

To go back to that other visit. The next morning after his arrival we went to the billiard [begin page 420] roomⒶtextual note and began work upon the play. I named my characters and described them; Harte did the same by his. Then he began to sketch the scenario, act by act, and scene by scene. He worked rapidly, and seemed to be troubled by no hesitations or indecisions; what he accomplished in an hour or two would have cost me several weeks of painful and difficult labor, and would have been valueless when I got through. But Harte’s work was good, and usable; to me it was a wonderful performance.

Then the filling-in began. Harte set down the dialogue swiftly, and I had nothing to do except when one of my characters was to say something; then Harte told me the nature of the remark that was required, I furnished the language, and he jotted it down. After this fashionⒶtextual note we worked two or three or four hours every day for a couple of weeks, and produced a comedy that was good and would actⒺexplanatory note. His part of it was the best part of it, but that did not disturb the critics; when the piece was staged they praised my share of the work with a quite suspicious prodigality of approval,Ⓐtextual note and gave Harte’s share all the vitriol they had in stock. The piece perishedⒺexplanatory note.

All that fortnight at our house Harte made himself liberally entertaining at breakfast, at luncheon, at dinner, and in the billiard roomⒶtextual note—which was our workshop—with smart and brightⒶtextual note sarcasms leveled at everything on the place; and for Mrs. Clemens’s sake I endured it all, until the last day; then, in the billiard roomⒶtextual note, he contributed the last feather:Ⓐtextual note it seemed to be a slight and vague and veiled satirical remark with Mrs. Clemens for a target; he denied that she was meant, and I might have accepted the denial if I had been in a friendly mood, but I was not, and was too strongly moved to give his reasonings a fair hearing. I said in substance this:

“Harte, your wife is all that is fine and lovable and lovely, and I exhaust praise when I say she is Mrs. Clemens’s peer—but in all ways you are a shabby husband to her, and you often speak sarcastically, not to say sneeringly, of her, just as you are constantly doing in the case of other women; but your privilege ends there; you must spare Mrs. Clemens. It does not become you to sneer at anybody at all; you are not charged anything here for the bed you sleep in, yet you have been very smartly and wittily sarcastic about it, whereas you ought to have been more reserved in that matter, remembering that you have not owned a bed of your own for ten years; you have made sarcastic remarks about the furniture of the bedroomⒶtextual note, and about the table-wareⒶtextual note, and about the servants, and about the carriage and the sleigh, and the coachman’s livery—in fact about every detail of the houseⒶtextual note and half of its occupants; you have spoken of all these matters contemptuously, in your unwholesome desire to be witty, but this does not become you; you are barred from these criticisms by your situation and circumstances; you have a talent and a reputation which would enable you to support your family most respectably and independently if you were not a born bummer and tramp; you are a loafer and an idler, and you go clothed in rags, with not a whole shred on you except your inflamed red tie, and it Ⓐtextual note isn’t paid for; nine-tenths of your income is borrowed money—money which, in fact, is stolen, since you never intended to repay any of it; you sponge upon your hard-working widowed sister for bread and shelter in the mechanics’ boarding-house which she keeps; latterly you have not ventured to show your face in her neighborhood because of the Ⓔexplanatory notecreditors who are on [begin page 421] watch for you. Where have you lived? Nobody knows. Your own people do not know. But I know. You have lived in the Jersey woods and marshes, and have supported yourself as do the other tramps; you have confessed it without a blush; you sneer at everything in this house, but you ought to be more tender, remembering that everything in it was honestly come by andⒶtextual note has been paid for.”

Harte owed me fifteen hundred dollars at that timeⒺexplanatory note; later he owed me three thousand. He offered me his note, but I was not keeping a museum, and didn’t take it.

Bret Harte continued: his contract with Bliss to write “Gabriel Conroy”—Two incidents: the miner of Jackass Gulch who borrowed a dollar of Mr. Clemens to give to the musical tramps; Bret Harte borrowed a dollar of Mr. Clemens to give to messenger for carrying manuscriptⒶtextual note to Parsloe’s theatre.

Harte’s indifference concerning contracts and engagements was phenomenal. He could be blithe and gay with a broken engagement hanging over him; he could even joke about the matter; if that kind of a situation ever troubled him, the fact was not discoverable by anybody. He entered into an engagement to write the novel, “Gabriel Conroy,” for my Hartford publisher, Bliss. It was to be published by subscription. With the execution of the contract, Bliss’s sorrows began. The precious time wasted along; Bliss could get plenty of promises out of Harte, but no manuscript—at least no manuscript while Harte had money, or could borrow it. He wouldn’t touch the pen until the wolf actually had him by the hind leg; then he would do two or three days’ violent work and let Bliss have it for an advance of royaltiesⒺexplanatory note. About once a month Harte would get into desperate straits; then he would dash off enough manuscript to set him temporarily free, and carry it to Bliss and get a royalty-advance. These assaults upon his prospective profits were never very large, except in the eyes of Bliss; to Bliss’s telescopic vision a couple of hundred dollars that weren’tⒶtextual note due, or hadn’t been earned, was a prodigious matter. By and by Bliss became alarmedⒶtextual note. In the beginning he had recognized that a contract for a full-grown novel from Bret Harte was a valuable prize, and he had been indiscreet enough to let his good fortune be trumpeted about the country. The trumpeting could have been valuable for Bliss if he had been dealing with a man addictedⒶtextual note to keeping his engagements; but he was not dealing with that kind of a man, therefore the influence of the trumpeting had died down and vanished away long before Harte had arrived at the middle of his book; that kind of an interest once dead is dead beyond resurrection. Finally Bliss realized that “Gabriel Conroy” was a white elephant. The book was nearing a finish, but,Ⓐtextual note as a subscription-book, its value had almost disappeared. He had advanced to Harte thus far—I think my figures are correct—thirty-six hundred dollars, and he knew that he should not be able to sleep much until he could find some way to make that loss good; so he sold the serial rights in “Gabriel Conroy” to one of the magazines for that trifling sum—and a good trade it was, for the serialⒶtextual note rights were not really worth that money, and the book-rightsⒶtextual note were hardly worth the duplicate of itⒺexplanatory note.

[begin page 422]

I think the sense of shame was left out of Harte’s constitution. He told me once, apparently as an incident of no importance—a mere casual reminiscence—that in his early days in California when he was a blooming young chap with the world before him, and bread and butter to seek, he kept a woman who was twice his age—no, the woman kept him. When he was ConsulⒶtextual note in Great Britain, twenty-five or thirty years later, he was kept, at different times,Ⓐtextual note by a couple of women—a connection which has gone into history, along with the names of those women. He lived in their houses, and in the house of one of them he diedⒺexplanatory note.

I call to mind an incident in my commerce with Harte which reminds me of one like itⒶtextual note which happened during my sojourn on the Pacific coastⒶtextual note. When Orion’s thoughtful carefulness enabled my “Hale and Norcross”Ⓐtextual note stock-speculation to ruin meⒺexplanatory note, I had three hundred dollars left, and nowhereⒶtextual note in particular to lay my head. I went to Jackass Gulch and cabined for a while with some friends of mine, surface-minersⒺexplanatory note. They were lovely fellows; charming comrades in every way, and honest and honorable men; their credit was good for bacon and beans, and this was fortunate, because their kind of mining was a peculiarly precarious one; it was called pocket-mining, and so far as I have been able to discover, pocket-mining is confined and restricted on this planet to a very small region around about Jackass Gulch. A “pocket” is a concentration of gold-dust in one little spot on the mountain-side; it is close to the surface; the rains wash its particles down the mountain-side, and they spread, fan-shape, wider and wider as they go. The pocket-miner washes a pan of dirt, finds a speck or two of gold in it, makes a stepⒶtextual note to the right or the left, washes another pan, finds another speck or two, and goes on washing to the right and to the left until he knows when he has reached both limits of the fan, by the best of circumstantial evidence, to wit—that his pan-washings furnish no longer the speck of gold. The rest of his work is easy—he washes along up the mountain-side, tracing the narrowing fan by his washings, and at last he reaches the gold depositⒶtextual note. It may contain only a few hundred dollars, which he can take out with a couple of dips of his shovel; also it may contain a concentrated treasure worth a fortune. It is the fortune he is after, and he will seek it with a never-perishing hope as long as he lives. These friends of mine had been seeking that fortune daily for eighteen years; they had never found itⒺexplanatory note, but they were not at all discouraged; they were quite sure they would find it some day. During the three months that I was with them they found nothing, but we had a fascinating and delightful good time trying. Not long after I left, a greaser (Mexican) came loafing along and found a pocket with a hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars in it on a slope which our boys had never happened to explore. Such is luck! And such the treatment which honest, good perseverance gets so often at the hands of unfair and malicious Nature!

Our clothes were pretty shabby, but that was no matter; we were in the fashion; the rest of the slender population were dressed as we were. Our boys hadn’t had a cent for several months, and hadn’t needed one, their credit being perfectly good for bacon, coffee, flour, beans and molasses. If there was any difference, Jim was the worst dressed of the three of us; if there was any discoverable difference in the matter of age, Jim’s shreds were the oldest; but he was a gallant creature, and his style and bearing could make any costume regal. One day we were in theⒶtextual note decayed and naked and rickety inn when a couple [begin page 423] of musical tramps appeared; one of them played the banjo, and the other one danced unscientific clog-dances and sang comic songs that made a person sorry to be alive. They passed the hat and collected three or four dimes from the dozen bankrupt pocket-miners present. When the hat approached Jim he said to me, with his fine millionaire air,

“Let me have a dollar.”

I gave him a couple of halves. Instead of modestly dropping them into the hat, he pitched them into it at the distance of a yard, just as in the ancient novels milord the Duke doesn’t hand Ⓐtextual note the beggar a benefaction, but “tosses” it to him, or flings it at his feet—and it is always a “purse of gold.” In the novel, the witnesses are always impressed; Jim’s great spirit was the spirit of the novel; to him the half-dollars were a purse of gold; like the Duke, he was playing to the gallery, but the parallel ends there. In the Duke’s case, the witnesses knew he could afford the purse of gold, and the largest part of their admiration consisted in envy of the man who could throw around purses of gold in that fine and careless way. The miners admired Jim’s handsome liberality, but they knew he couldn’t afford what he had done, and that fact modified their admiration. Jim was worth a hundred of Bret Harte, for he was a man, and a whole man. In his little exhibition of vanity and pretenseⒶtextual note he exposed a characteristic which made him resemble Harte, but the resemblance began and ended there.

I come to the Harte incident now. When our play was in a condition to be delivered to Parsloe, the lessee of itⒺexplanatory note, I had occasion to go to New York, and I stopped at the St. James Hotel, as usual. Harte had been procrastinating; the play should have been in Parsloe’s hands a day or two earlier than this, but Harte had not attended to it. About seven in the evening he came into the lobby of the hotel, dressed in an ancient gray suit so out of repair that the bottoms of his trowsersⒶtextual note were frazzled to a fringe; his shoes were similarly out of repair, and were sodden with snow-slush and mud, and on his head, and slightly tipped to starboard, rested a crumpled and gallusⒺexplanatory note little soft hat which was a size or two too small for him; his bright little red necktie was present, and rather more than usually cheery and contented and conspicuous. He had the play in his hand. Parsloe’s theatre was not three minutes’ walk distant; I supposed he would say,

“Come along—let’s take the play to Parsloe.”

But he didn’t; he stepped up to the counter, offered his parcel to the clerk, and said, with the manner of an earl,

“It is for Mr. Parsloe—send it to the theatre.”

The clerk looked him over austerely and said, with the air of a person who is presenting a checkmating difficulty,

“The messenger’s fee will be ten cents.”

Harte said,

“Call him.”

Which the clerk did. The boy answered the call, took the parcel and stood waiting for orders. There was a certain maliciousⒶtextual note curiosity visible in the clerk’s face. Harte turned toward me, and said,

“Let me have a dollar.”

[begin page 424]

I handed it to him. He handed it to the boy and said,

“Run along.”

The clerk said, “Wait, I’ll give you the change.”

Harte gave his hand a ducal wave and said,

“Never mind it. Let the boy keep it.”

Bret Harte continued: he avoids voting either for Tilden
or Hayes because each has promised him a consulship; sends his sonⒶtextual note to John McCullough with letter of introduction; Mr. Clemens denounces him in the Players Club.

Edward Everett Hale wrote a book which made a great and pathetic sensation when it issued from the press in the lurid days when the Civil War was about to break outⒶtextual note and the North and South were crouched for a spring at each other’s throats. It was called “A Man Without a Country.”Ⓔexplanatory note Harte, in a mild and colorless way, was that kind of a man—that is to say, he was a man without a country; no, not man—man is too strong a term: he was an invertebrate without a country. He hadn’t any more passion for his country than an oyster has for its bed; in fact not so much, and I apologize to the oyster. The higherⒶtextual note passions were left out of Harte; what he knew about them he got from books. When he put themⒶtextual note into his own books they were imitations; often good ones, often as deceptive to people who did not know Harte as are the actor’s simulation of passions on the stage when he is not feeling themⒶtextual note but is only following certain faithfully studied rules for their artificial reproduction. On the 7th of November 1876—I think it was the 7th—he suddenly appeared at my house in Hartford and remained there during the following day—election dayⒶtextual note. As usual, he was tranquil; he was serene; doubtless the only serene and tranquil voter in the United States; the rest—as usual in our country—were excited away up to the election limit, for that vast political conflagration was blazing at white heat which was presently to end in one of the Republican party’s most cold-blooded swindles of the American people—the stealing of the PresidentialⒶtextual note chair from Mr. Tilden, who had been elected, and the conferring of it upon Mr. Hayes, who had been defeated. I was an ardent Hayes manⒺexplanatory note, but that was natural, for I was pretty young at the time. I have since convinced myself that the political opinions of a nation are of next to no value, in any case, but that what little rag of value they possess is to be found among the old, rather than among the young. I was as excited and inflamed as was the rest of the voting world, and I was surprised when Harte said he was going to remain with us until the day after the election; but not much surprised, for he was such a careless creature that I thought it just possible that he had gotten his dates mixed. There was plenty of time for him to correct his mistake, and I suggested that he go back to New York and not lose his vote. But he said he was not caring about his vote; that he had come away purposely, in order that he might avoid voting and yet have a good excuse to answer the critics with. Then he told me why he did not wish to vote. He said that through influential friends he had secured the promise of a consulate from Mr. Tilden, and the same promise from Mr. Hayes; that he was going to be taken [begin page 425] care of no matter how the contest might go, and that his interest in the election began and ended there. He said he could not afford to vote for either of the candidates, because the other candidate might find it out and consider himself privileged to cancel his pledge. It was a curious satire upon our political system! Why should a PresidentⒶtextual note care how an impending ConsulⒶtextual note had voted? Consulships are not political offices; naturally and properly a Consul’sⒶtextual note qualifications should begin and end with fitness for the post; and in an entirely sane political system the question of a man’s political complexion could have nothing to do with the matter. However, the man who was defeated by the nation was placed in the PresidentialⒶtextual note chair, and the man without a country got his consulshipⒺexplanatory note.

Harte had no feeling, for the reason that he had no machinery to feel with. John McCullough, the tragedianⒺexplanatory note, was a man of high character; a generous man, a lovable man, and a man whose truthfulness could not be challenged. He was a great admirer of Harte’s literature, and in the early days in San Francisco he had had a warm fondness for Harte himself; as the years went by, this fondness cooled to some extent, a circumstance for which Harte was responsible. However, in the days of Harte’s consulship McCullough’s affection for him had merely undergone a diminution; it had by no means disappeared; but by and by something happened which abolished what was left of it. John McCullough told me all about it. One day a young man appeared in his quarters in New York and said he was Bret Harte’s son, and had just arrived from England with a letter of introduction and recommendation from his father—and he handed the letter to McCullough. McCullough greeted him cordially, and said,

“I was expecting you, my boy. I know your errand, through a letter which I have already received from your father; and by good luck I am in a position to satisfy your desire. I have just the place for you, and you can consider yourself on salary from to-day, and now.”

Young Harte was eloquently grateful, and said,

“I knew you would be expecting me, for my father promised me that he would write you in advance.”

McCullough had Harte’s letter in his pocket, but he did not read it to the lad. In substance it was this:

“My boy is stage-struck and wants to go to you for help, for he knows that you and I are old friends. To get rid of his importunities, I have been obliged to start him across the water equipped with a letter strongly recommending him to your kindness and protection, and begging you to do the best you can to forward his ambition, for my sake. I was obliged to write the letter, I couldn’t get out of it, but the presentⒶtextual note letter is to warn you, beforehand, to pay no attention to the other one. My son is stage-struck, but he isn’t of any account, and will never amount to anything; therefore don’t bother yourself with him; it wouldn’t pay you for your lost time and sympathy.”

John McCullough stood by the boyⒺexplanatory note and pushed his fortunes on the stage, and was the best father the lad ever had.

I have said more than once, in these pages, that Harte had no heart and no conscience, and I have also said that he was mean and base. I have not said, perhaps, that he was treacherous, but if I have omitted that remark I wish to add it now.

[begin page 426]

All of us, at one time or another, blunder stupidly into indiscreet acts and speeches; I am not an exception; I have done it myself. About a dozen years ago, I drifted into the Players Club one night and found half a dozen of the boys grouped cosilyⒶtextual note in a private corner sipping punches and talking. I joined them and assisted. Presently Bret Harte’s name was mentioned, and straightway that mention fired a young fellow who sat at my elbow, and for the next ten minutes he talked as only a person can talk whose subject lies near his heart. Nobody interrupted; everybody was interested. The young fellow’s talk was made up of strong and genuine enthusiasms; its subject was praise—praise of Mrs. Harte and her daughters. He told how they were living in a little town in New Jersey, and how hard they worked, and how faithfully, and how cheerfully, and how contentedly, to earn their living—Mrs. Harte by teaching music, the daughters by exercising the arts of drawingⒺexplanatory note, embroidery, and such things—I, meantime, listening as eagerly as the rest, for I was aware that he was speaking the truth, and not overstating it.

ButⒶtextual note presently he diverged into eulogies of the ostensible head of that deserted family, Bret Harte. He said that the family’s happiness had one defect in it; the absence of Harte. He said that their love and their reverence for him was a beautiful thing to see and hear; also their pity of him on account of his enforced exile from them. He also said that Harte’s own grief,Ⓐtextual note because of this bitter exile,Ⓐtextual note was beautiful to contemplate; that Harte’s faithfulness in writing, by every steamer, was beautiful, too; that he was always longing to come home in his vacations, but his salary was so small that he could not afford it; nevertheless, in his letters he was always promising himself this happiness in the next steamer, or the next one after that one; and that it was pitiful to see the family’s disappointment when the named steamers kept on arriving without him; that his self-sacrifice was an ennobling spectacle; that he was man enough, and fine enough, to deny himself in order that he might send to the family every month, for their support, that portion of his salary which a more selfish person would devote to the Atlantic voyage.

Up to this time I had “stood the raise,”Ⓐtextual note as the poker players say, but now I broke out and called the young fellow’s hand—as the pokers also say. I couldn’t help it. I saw that he had been misinformed. It seemed to be my duty to set him right. I said,

“Oh that be hanged! There’s nothing in it. Bret Harte has deserted his family, and that is the plain English of it. Possibly he writes them, but I am not weak enough to believe it until I seeⒶtextual note the letters; possibly he is pining to come home to his deserted family, but no one that knows him will believe that. But there is one thing about which I think there can be no possibility of doubt—and that is, that he has never sent them a dollarⒺexplanatory note, and has never intended to send them a dollar. Bret Harte is the most contemptible, poor little soulless blatherskite that exists on the planet to-day——”

I had been dimly aware, very vaguely aware, by fitful glimpses of the countenances around me, that something was happening. It was I that was happening, but I didn’t know it. But when I had reached the middle of that last sentence somebody seized me and whispered into my ear, with energy,

“For goodness sake shut up! This young fellow is Steele. He’s engaged to one of the daughtersⒺexplanatory note.”

[begin page 427]

Bret Harte concluded—Newspaper item regarding his daughter—Mr. Clemens shows that she is not responsible for her unfortunate condition, as she inherited her temperament from her father; also shows that no one is responsible for his actions, because of the law of temperament: the lower animals are not responsible for their peculiar traits, why should human beings be responsible for theirs, when they inherit them from the lower animals?

Ten or twelve days ago, this Associated Press telegram appeared in the twenty-three hundred daily newspapers of the United States, and of course was cabled to Europe:

Who is to blame for this tragedy? That poor woman? I think not. She came by her unwise and unhappy ways legitimately; they are an inheritance; she got them from her father, along with her temperament. Temperament is a law, and that which it commands its possessor must obey; restraint, training, and environmentⒶtextual note can dull its action or suppress it for a time—long or short according to circumstances—but that is the most, and the best, that can be done with it; nothing can ever permanently modify it, by even a shade, between the cradle and the grave. Is this girl responsible for the results of her temperament? She did not invent her temperamentⒶtextual note herself; she was not consulted in the matter; she was allowed no more choice in the character of it than she was allowed in the selection of the color of her hair. Bret Harte transmitted his unfortunate temperament to her. WasⒶtextual note he to blame for this? I cannot see that he was. He was not allowed a choice in the sort of temperament he was to confer upon her. To take up the next detail: was he to blame for the unhappy results of his own temperament? If he was, I fail to see how. He did not invent his temperament; he was not allowed a voice in the selection of it. Did he inherit it from his parents?Ⓐtextual note—from his grandparents?Ⓐtextual note—from his great-grandparents? If so, [begin page 428] were they responsible for the results of their temperament? I think not. If we could trace Harte’s unlucky inheritance all the way back to Adam, I think we should still have to confess that all the transmitters of it were blameless, since none of them ever had a voice in the choice of the temperament they were to transmit. As I have said, it is my conviction that a person’s temperament is a law, an iron law, and has to be obeyed, no matter who disapproves;Ⓐtextual note manifestly, as it seems to me, temperament is a law of God, and is supreme, and takes precedence of all human laws. It is my conviction that each and every human law that exists has one distinct purpose and intention, and only one: to oppose itself to a law of God and defeat it, degrade it, deride it, and trample upon it. We find no fault with the spider for ungenerously ambushing the fly and taking its life; we do not call it murder; we concede that it did not invent its own temperament, its own nature, and is therefore not blamable for the acts which the law of its nature requires and commands. We even concede this large point: that no art and no ingenuity can ever reform the spider and persuade her to cease from her assassinations. We do not blame the tiger for obeying the ferocious law of the temperament which God lodged in him, and which the tiger must obey. We do not blame the wasp for her fearful cruelty in half paralysingⒶtextual note a spider with her sting and then stuffing the spider down a hole in the ground to suffer there many days, while the wasp’s nursery gradually torture the helpless creature through a long and miserable death by gnawing rations from its person dailyⒺexplanatory note;Ⓐtextual note we concede that the waspⒶtextual note is strictly and blamelessly obeying the law of God as required by the temperament which He has put into her. We do not blame the fox, the blue jay, and the many other creatures that live by theft; we concede that they are obeying the law of God promulgated by the temperament with which He provided forⒶtextual note them. We do not say to the ram and the goat “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” for we know that ineradicably embedded in their temperament—that is to say in their born nature—God has said to them “ThouⒶtextual note shalt Ⓐtextual note commit it.”Ⓐtextual note

If we should go on until we had singled out and mentioned the separate and distinct temperaments which have been distributed among the myriads of the animal world, we should find that the reputationⒶtextual note of each species is determined by one special and prominent trait; and then we should find that all of these traits, and all the shadings of these many traits, have also been distributed among mankind; that in every man a dozen or more of these traits exist, and that in many men traces and shadings of the whole of them exist. In what we call the lower animals, temperaments are often built out of merely one, or two, or three, of these traits;Ⓐtextual note but man is a complex animal, and it takes all of the traits to fit him out.Ⓐtextual note In the rabbit we always find meekness and timidity, and in him we never find courage, insolence, aggressiveness;Ⓐtextual note and so when the rabbit is mentioned we always remember that he is meek and timid; if he has any other traits or distinctions—except, perhaps, an extravagant and inordinate fecundity—they never occur to us. When we consider the house-fly and the flea, we remember that in splendid courage the belted knight and the tiger cannot approach them, and that in impudence and insolence they lead the whole animal world, including even man; if those creatures have other traits they are so overshadowed by those which I have mentioned that we never think of them at all. When the peacock is mentioned, vanity occurs to us, and no other trait; when we think [begin page 429] of the goat, unchastity occurs to us, and no other trait; when certain kinds of dogs are mentioned, loyalty occurs to us, and no other trait; when the cat is mentioned, her independence—a trait which she alone of all created creatures, including man, possesses—occurs to us, and no other trait; except we be of the stupid and the ignorant—then we think of treachery, a trait which is common to many breeds of dogs, but is not common to the cat. We can find one or two conspicuous traits in each family of what we impudently call the lower animals; in each case these one or two conspicuous traits distinguish that family of animals from the other families; also in each case those one or two traits are found in every one of the members of each family, and are so prominent as to eternally and unchangeably establish the character of that branch of the animal world. In all these cases we concede that the several temperaments constitute a law of God, a command of God, and that whatsoever is done in obedience to that law is blameless.

Man was descended from those animals; from them he inherited every trait that is in him; from them he inherited the whole of their numerous traits in a body, and with each trait its share of the law of God. He widely differs from them in this: that he possesses not a single trait that is similarly and equally prominent in each and every member of his race. You can say the house-fly is limitlessly brave, and in saying it you describe the whole house-fly tribe; you can say the rabbit is limitlessly timid, and by that phrase you describe the whole rabbit tribe; you can say the spider is limitlessly murderous, and by that phrase you describe the whole spider tribe; you can say the lamb is limitlessly innocent, and sweet, and gentle, and by that phrase you describe all the lambs; you can say the goat is limitlessly unchaste, and by that phrase you describe the whole tribe of goats. There is hardly a creature which you cannot definitely and satisfactorily describe by one single trait—but you cannot describe man by one single trait. Men are not all cowards, like the rabbit; nor all brave, like the house-fly; nor all sweet and innocent and gentle, like the lamb; nor all murderous, like the spider and the wasp; nor all thieves, like the fox and the blue jay; nor all vain, like the peacock; nor all beautiful, like the angel-fishⒶtextual note; nor all frisky, like the monkey; nor all unchaste, like the goat. The human family cannot be described by any one phrase; each individual has to be described by himself. One is brave, another is a coward; one is gentle and kindly, another is ferocious; one is proud and vain, another is modest and humble. The multifarious traits that are scattered, one or two at a time, throughout the great animal world, are all concentrated, in varying and nicely shaded degrees of force and feebleness, in the form of instincts, in each and every member of the human family. In some men the vicious traits are so slight as to be imperceptible, while the nobler traits stand out conspicuously. We describe that man by those fine traits, and we give him praise and accord him high merit for their possession. It seems comical. He did not invent his traits; he did not stock himself with them; he inherited them at his birth; God conferred them upon him; they are the law that God imposed upon him, and he could not escape obedience if he should try. Sometimes a man is a born murderer, or a born scoundrel—like Stanford WhiteⒺexplanatory note—and upon him the world lavishes censure and dispraise; but he is only obeying the law of his nature, the law of his temperament; he is not at all likely to try to disobey it, and if he should try he [begin page 430] would fail. It is a curious and humorous fact that we excuse all the unpleasant things that the creatures that crawl, and fly, and swim, and go on four legs do, for the recognizably sufficient reason that they are but obeying the law of their nature, which is the law of God, and are therefore innocent; then we turn about and with the fact plain before us that we get all our unpleasant traits by inheritance from those creatures, we blandly assert that we did not inherit the immunities along with them, but that it is our duty to ignore, abolish, and break these laws of God. It seems to me that this argumentⒶtextual note has not a leg to stand upon, and that it is not merely and mildly humorous, but violently grotesque.

By ancient training and inherited habit, I have been heaping blame after blame, censure after censure, upon Bret Harte, and have felt the things I have said, but when my temper is cool I have no censures for him. The law of his nature was stronger than man’s statutes and he had to obey it. It is my conviction that the human race is no proper target for harsh words and bitter criticisms, and that the only justifiable feeling toward it is compassion; it did not invent itself, and it had nothing to do with the planning of its weak and foolish character.