A Tramp Through The Bret Harte Country | Page 2

Buildings Are
Half-hidden"
Sonora, Looking Southeast. "No Matter From What Direction You
Approach It, Sonora Seems to Lie Basking in the Sun"
Main Street, San Andreas, "During the Mid-day Heat, Almost
Deserted"
Metropolitan Hotel, San Andreas; in the Bar-room of Which Occurred
the "Jumping Frog" Incident
Mokelumne Hotel, on the Summit of Mokelumne Hill, and at the Head
of the Famous Chili Gulch
Placerville, the County Seat of El Dorado County, From the Road to
Diamond Springs
The Cary House, Placerville. "It Was Here That Horace Greeley
Terminated His Celebrated Stage Ride With Hank Monk"
Middle Fork of the American River, Near Auburn, and Half a Mile
Above Its Junction With the North Fork

An Apple Orchard, Grass Valley, "The Trees Growing in the Grass, as
in England and the Atlantic States"
The Western Hotel, Grass Valley. "The Well and Pump Add a Quaint
and Characteristic Touch"
A Bit of Picturesque Nevada City, Embracing the Homes of Its Leading
Citizens

Foreword

In California's imaginary Hall of Fame, Bret Harte must be accorded a
prominent, if not first place. His short stories and dialect poems
published fifty years ago made California well known the world over
and gave it a romantic interest conceded no other community. He saw
the picturesque and he made the world see it. His power is
unaccountable if we deny him genius. He was essentially an artist. His
imagination gave him vision, a new life in beautiful setting supplied
colors and rare literary skill painted the picture.
His capacity for absorption was marvelous. At the age of about twenty
he spent less than a year in the foot-hills of the Sierras, among pioneer
miners, and forty-five years of literary output did not exhaust his
impressions. He somewhere refers to an "eager absorption of the
strange life around me, and a photographic sensitiveness," to certain
scenes and incidents." "Eager absorption," "photographic
sensitiveness," a rich imagination and a fine literary style, largely due
to his mother, enabled him to win at his death this acknowledgment
from the "London Spectator:" "No writer of the present day has struck
so powerful and original a note as he has sounded."
Francis Bret Harte was born in Albany, New York, August 25, 1836.
His father was a teacher and translator; his mother a woman of high
character and cultivated tastes. His father having died, he, when nine,
became an office boy and later a clerk. In 1854 he came to California to

join his mother who had married again, arriving in Oakland in March
of that year. His employment for two years was desultory. He worked
in a drug store and also wrote for Eastern magazines. Then he went to
Alamo in the San Ramon Valley as tutor - a valued experience. Later in
1856 he went to Tuolumne County where, among other things, he
taught school, and may have been an express messenger. At any rate,
he stored his memory with material that ten years later made him and
the whole region famous.
In 1857 he went to Humboldt County where his sister was living. He
was an interesting figure, gentlemanly, fastidious, reserved, sensitive,
with a good fund of humor, a pleasant voice and a modest manner. He
seemed poorly fitted for anything that needed doing. He was willing,
for I saw him digging post holes and building a fence with results
somewhat unsatisfactory. He was more successful as tutor for two of
my boy friends. He finally became printers' devil in the office of the
"Northern Californian," where he learned the case, and incidentally
contributed graceful verse and clever prose.
He returned to San Francisco early in 1860 and found work on the
"Golden Era," at first as compositor and soon as writer. In May, 1864,
he left the "Golden Era" and joined others in starting "The Californian."
Two months later he was made editor of the new "Overland Monthly."
The second number contained "The Luck of Roaring Camp." It
attracted wide attention as a new note. Other stories and poems of merit
followed. Harte's growing reputation burst in full bloom when in 1870
he filled a blank space in the "Overland" make-up with "The Heathen
Chinee." It was quoted on the floor of the Senate and gained
world-wide fame. He received flattering offers and felt constrained to
accept the best. In February, 1871, he left California. A Boston
publisher had offered him $10,000 for whatever he might write in the
following year. Harte accepted, but the output was small.
For seven years he wrote spasmodically, eking out his income by
lecturing and newspaper work. Life was hard. In 1878 he sailed for
Europe, having been appointed consular agent at Crefeld, Prussia,
about forty miles north of Cologne. In 1880 he was made Consul at

Glasgow, where he remained five years. His