FRANCIS BRET HARTE.

THE POET OF THE MINING CAMP AND THE WESTERN MOUNTAINS.

HE turbulent mining camps of California, with their vicious hangerson, have been embalmed for future generations by the unerring genius of Bret Harte, who sought to reveal the remnants of honor in man, and loveliness in woman, despite the sins and vices of the mining towns of our Western frontier thirty or forty years ago. His writings have been regarded with disfavor by a religious class of readers because of the frequent occurrence of rough phrases and even profanity which he employs in his descriptions. It should be remembered, however, that a faithful portrait of the conditions and people which he described could hardly have been presented in more polite language than that employed.

Bret Harte was born in Albany, New York, in 1839. His father was a scholar of ripe culture, and a teacher in the Albany Female Seminary. He died poor when Bret was quite young, consequently the education of his son was confined to the common schools of the city. When only seventeen years of age, young Harte, with his widowed mother, emigrated to California. Arriving in San Francisco he walked to the mines of Sonora and there opened a school which he taught for a short time. Thus began his self-education in the mining life which furnished the material for his early literature. After leaving his school he became a miner, and at odd times learned to set type in the office of one of the frontier papers. He wrote sketches of the strange life around him, set them up in type himself, and offered the proofs to the editor, believing that in this shape they would be more certain of acceptance. His aptitude with his pen secured him a position on the paper, and in the absence of the editor he once controlled the journal and incurred popular wrath for censuring a little massacre of Indians by the leading citizens of the locality, which came near bringing a mob upon him.

The young adventurer, for he was little else at this time,-also served as mounted messenger of an express company and as express agent in several mountain towns, which gave him a full knowledge of the picturesque features of mining life. In 1857 he returned to San Francisco and secured a position as compositor on a weekly literary journal. Here again he repeated his former trick of setting up and submitting several spirited sketches of mining life in type. These were accepted and soon earned him an editorial position on the "Golden Era." After this he made many contributions to the daily papers and his tales of Western life began to attract attention in the East. In 1858, he married, which put an end to his wanderings.

He attempted to publish a newspaper of his own, "The Californian," which was bright and worthy to live, but failed for want of proper business management.

In 1864 Mr. Harte was appointed Secretary of the United States Branch Mint at San Francisco, and during his six years of service in this position found leisure to write some of his popular poems, such as "John Burns, of Gettysburg," "How Are You, Sanitary?" and others, which were generally printed in the daily newspapers. He also became editor of the "Overland Monthly" when it was founded in 1868, and soon made this magazine as great a favorite on the Atlantic as on the Pacific Coast, by his contribution to its columns of a series of sketches of California life which have won a permanent place in literature. Among these sketches are "The Luck of Roaring Camp," telling how a baby came to rule the hearts of a rough, dissolute gang of miners. It is said that this masterpiece, however, narrowly escaped the waste-basket at the hands of the proofreader, a woman, who, without noticing its origin, regarded it as utter trash. "The Outcast of Poker Flat," Miggles," "Tennessee's Partner," "An Idyl of Red Gulch," and many other stories which revealed the spark of humanity remaining in brutalized men and women, followed in rapid succession.

Bret Harte was a man of the most humane nature, and sympathized deeply with the Indian and the Chinaman in the rough treatment they received at the hands of the early settlers, and his literature, no doubt, did much to soften and mollify the actions of those who read them-and it may be safely said that almost every one did, as he was about the only author at that time on the Pacific Slope and very popular. His poem, "The Heathen Chinee," generally called "Plain Language from Truthful James," was a masterly satire against the hue and cry that the Chinese were shiftless and weak-minded settlers. This poem appeared in 1870 and was wonderfully popular.

In the spring of 1871 the professorship of recent literature in the University of California was offered to Mr. Harte, on his resignation of the editorship of the "Overland Monthly," but he declined the proffer to try his literary fortunes in the more cultured East. He endeavored to found a magazine in Chicago, but his efforts failed, and he went to Boston to accept a position on the "Atlantic Monthly," since which time his pen has been constantly employed by an increasing demand from various magazines and literary journals. Mr. Harte has issued many volumes of prose and poetry, and it is difficult to say in which field he has won greater distinction. Both as a prose writer and as a poet he has treated similar subjects with equal facility. His reputation was made, and his claim to fame rests upon his intuitive insight into the heart of our common humanity. A number of his sketches have been translated into French and German, and of late years he has lived much abroad, where he is, if any difference, more lionized than he was in his native country.

From 1878 to 1885 Mr. Harte was United States Consul successively to Crefield and Glasgow. Ferdinand Freiligraph, one of his German translators, and himself a poet, pays this tribute to his peculiar excellence:

"Nevertheless he remains what he is the Californian and the gold-digger. But the gold for which he has dug, and which he found, is not the gold in the bed of rivers-not the gold in veins of mountains; it is the gold of love, of goodness, of

fidelity, of humanity, which even in rude and wild hearts-even under the rubbish of vices and sins-remains forever uneradicated from the human heart. That he there searched for this gold, that he found it there and triumphantly exhibited it to the world—that is his greatness and his merit."

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His works as published from 1867 to 1890 include "Condensed Novels," "Poems," "The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Sketches," "East and West Poems," "Poetical Works," "Mrs. Skaggs' Husbands," "Echoes of the Foothills," "Tales of the Argonauts," "Gabriel Conroy," "Two Men of Sandy Bar," "Thankful Blossom," "Story of a Mine," "Drift from Two Shores," "The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories," "In the Carquinez Woods," "On the Frontier," "By Shore and Ledge," "Snowbound at Eagles," "The Crusade of the Excelsior," "A Phyllis of the Sierras." One of Mr. Harte's most popular late novels, entitled "Three Partners; or, The Big Strike on Heavy Tree Hill," was published as a serial in 1897. Though written while the author was in Europe, the vividness of the description and the accurate delineations of the miner character are as strikingly real as if it had been produced by the author while residing in the mining country of his former Western home.

That broke up our Society upon the Stan-
islow.

But first, I would remark, that it is not a proper plan
For any scientific gent to whale his fellow-man,

And, if a member don't agree with his peculiar whim,
To lay for that same member for to "put a head" on
him.

Now nothing could be finer or more beautiful to see
Than the first six months' proceedings of that same
Society,

Till Brown of Calaveras brought a lot of fossil bones
That he found within a tunnel near the tenement of
Jones.

Then Brown, he read a paper, and he reconstructed
there,

From those same bones, an animal that was extremely

He was a most sarcastic man, this quiet Mr. Brown,
And on several occasions he had cleaned out the town.

Now, I hold it is not decent for a scientific gent
To say another is an ass,—at least, to all intent;
Nor should the individual who happens to be meant
Reply by heaving rocks at him, to any great extent.

And then, while shadows 'round them gathered faster, Lost is that camp! but let its fragrant story

N the fourth day of November, 1895, there was many a sad home in the city of Chicago and throughout America. It was on that day that Eugene Field, the most congenial friend young children ever had among the literary men of America, died at the early age of forty-five. The expressions of regard and regret called out on all sides by this untimely death, made it clear that the character in which the public at large knew and loved Mr. Field best was that of the "Poet of Child Life.' What gives his poems their unequaled hold on the popular heart is their simplicity, warmth and genuineness. This quality they owe to the fact that Mr. Field almost lived in the closest and fondest intimacy with children. He had troops of them for his friends and it is said he wrote his child-poems directly under their suggestions and inspiration.

We might fill far more space than is at our command in this volume relating incidents which go to show his fondness for little ones. It is said that on the day of his marriage, he delayed the ceremony to settle a quarrel between some urchins who were playing marbles in the street. So long did he remain to argue the question with them that all might be satisfied, the time for the wedding actually passed and when sent for, he was found squatted down among them acting as peace-maker. It is also said that on one occasion he was invited by the noted divine, Dr. Gunsaulus, to visit his home. The children of the family had been reading Field's poems and looked forward with eagerness to his coming. When he arrived, the first question he asked the children, after being introduced to them, was, "Where is the kitchen?" and expressed his desire to see it. Child-like, and to the embarrassment of the mother, they led him straight to the cookery where he seized upon the remains of a turkey which had been left from the meal, carried it into the diningroom, seated himself and made a feast with his little friends, telling them quaint stories all the while. After this impromptu supper, he spent the remainder of the evening singing them lullabies and reciting his verses. Naturally before he went away, the children had given him their whole hearts and this was the way with all children with whom he came into contact.

The devotion so unfailing in his relation to children would naturally show itself in other relations. His devotion to his wife was most pronounced. In all the world she was the only woman he loved and he never wished to be away from her. Often