Bret Harte

I will have a stenographer there, and you can start dictating your stories, and we shall set the world laughing, putting them in a book." Fisher did, and here's the book.

Twain and Field did not expatriate themselves to the extent of other gifted Americans, Henry James, Bret Harte, Whistler, Abbey, and Sargent.

Yet Twain settled down for months and even years in various European countries, while Field tried, during a hundred days or more, to make a go of it in London before capitulating to climate and home hunger.

Previous glimpses of these two great American humorists during their several sojourns in Europe have come to us almost wholly through their letters to friends at home.

The biggest names of the era drifted through.

Mark Twain and another writer named Bret Harte were both made honorary members.

A little later, Jack London also joined.

Another early member was Henry George, a reformer who spent his whole career attacking the concentration of wealth.

Thus, a man with money at his command could wander from the Dutch room, where, in the picturesque surroundings of a Dutch kitchen, croupier in the costume of Holland ministered to his needs, to the Japanese room, where his coin would be raked in by quite passable imitations of the samurai.

If he had any left at this point, he was free to dispose of it under the auspices of near Hindus in the Indian room, of merry Swiss peasants in the Swiss room, or in other appropriately furnished apartments of red-shirted Bret Harte miners, fur-clad Eskimo, or languorous Spaniards.

He could then, if a man of spirit who did not know when he was beaten, collect the family jewels and proceed down the main hall, accompanied by the strains of an excellent band, to the office of a gentlemanly pawnbroker who spoke seven languages like a native and was prepared to advance money on reasonable security in all of them.

It was a colossal venture.

MARK TWAIN AT HOME FROM THE LONDON WORLD A SOCIETY WEEKLY The London World, in a series of pen portraits of celebrities at home, devoted a paper to Mark Twain at Hartford, giving a pleasant sketch of the characteristics of the great American humorist.

It says, Among those American authors who, because they have had the courage to cut loose from the apron-strings of England, have achieved the greatest success both at home and abroad mark twain is in point of popularity facile princeps those who only know him as the author of the innocents abroad and roughing it are apt to imagine he is a kind of frontier joker of the type with which bret harte has made us familiar it may be that there is even yet a vague suspicion of this bent although his external person certainly shows no trace of it if you see him in his charming home at hartford in the valley of the connecticut surrounded with every object which taste and wealth can procure you feel that such a connection has been erroneous the mansion with its quaint old english architecture and its exquisite tiles and mosaics the rich ferneries and half tropical hot-houses are no mere extraneous accumulations such as any man of wealth might create but a gradual and organic outgrowth of the owner's mind which gives you a delightful peep into the inner recesses of his character the main building as well as the stables is built of dark red brick with dark brown trimmings interspersed with inlaid devices of scarlet painted brick and black greek patterns in mosaic the whole has a most novel and pleasing effect nothing gaudy and glaring but all arranged with a rare artistic taste and a strict regard for harmony in colors and outlines during the summer the outer window-sills are draped with hanging ferns and bright and the woodwork of the broad east indian portico is half concealed beneath the foliage of clambering vines but as winter reigns supreme during a good many months of the year in new england mark twain has taken care to provide himself with summer vistas even while nature does not afford them his library the place where the owner is most frequently to be found opens into a miniature greenhouse full of tall graceful ferns and blooming tropical plants in the midst of all these luxuriant exotics a fountain is constantly playing shedding its spray over the smooth white rocks at its base in the pleasant city of hartford he has gathered about him a delightful circle of friends authors business men and lawyers to whom his hospitable doors are always open and he is indeed the prince of entertainers sitting in his richly furnished library to whose beauty and artistic completeness half the lands of europe have contributed he will tell an anecdote or discuss a literary or social question with a calm directness and earnestness revealing to you an entirely new side of his character that has nothing in common with that which he is wont to display to the public who throng to his lectures even his drollest stories he relates with this same earnest impressiveness and with a face as serious as a sexton's his brilliancy has a certain delightful quality which is almost too evanescent to be imprisoned in any one phrase you have no oppressive consciousness that you are expected to laugh you rather feel as if the talker had unexpectedly taken you into his confidence and you feel your heart going out toward him in return throughout his house mark twain has indulged liberally his taste for wood-tints and quaint carvings each of the doors in the library is surmounted with carved cherubs and other biblical and mythical figures spoils from some european pilgrimage in his study on the second floor he revels in sphinxes and griffins whose reclining bodies and capacious wings fashion themselves into luxurious lounges easy-chairs and sofas the mantelpiece with all its magnificent superstructure had once adorned an old english or scottish country seat and mark twain was fortunate enough to pick it up during one of his many sojourns in england amid these surroundings mark twain spends the time between breakfast and dinner composing with much serious reflection the sketches novels and dramas which have shaken the american public with laughter after dinner the chances are that you will find him tranquilly smoking a cigar before the fire in the library and chatting leisurely with some friend who addresses him plainly as mark as his nom de plume somehow persists in clinging to him both in his private and public relations his rich and varied experiences in the past as a western editor gold-digger and pilot on the mississippi have stored his brain with abundant material for future works which have still to be written mark twain is a man of middle height solidly built but not stout his features are all of a clear massive modeling and the prevailing expression seems to be resolute courage and determination his upper lip is covered with a thick brown mustache and the broad territory of his forehead is usually encroached upon by his brown curly hair his eyes are small and keen but are by no means lacking in kindliness and humor in his whole bearing there is a frank cordiality which is very winning his fine library and his easy conversation testify to the excellence of his literary taste mark twain is a devoted admirer of macaulay and has a habit of ever returning to him when the lighter literary pabulum of the day begins to pall upon his sense the much abused term professional humorist can hardly apply to mark twain he is rather a constitutional humorist because his mind is so fashioned that in dealing with any subject whatever the humorist point of view first and most naturally presents itself to him for all that he is very careful not to rush into publicity with a half-formed or half-perfected thought his after-dinner speeches which are probably read by a larger number of men and women in america than any public document the president's message not accepted would no doubt have been very good and very laughable even if they had been entirely impromptu but the careful and critical revision to which he subjects them before their public appearance certainly refines their quality when mark twain is not writing or making speeches he smokes and if he feels any further need of recreation he takes it in playing billiards in the third story of his house there is an elegantly appointed billiard-room where he often spends an evening with three or four masculine friends though he keeps handsome horses housing them in a superb stable and may be seen daily driving through the city with a fine pair of bays he is not much of a connoisseur of horse-flesh or a sportsman

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It runs thus.

on the return of a book lent to a friend i give humble and hearty thanks for the safe return of this book which having endured the perils of my friend's bookcase and the bookcases of my friend's friends now returns to me in reasonably good condition i give humble and hearty thanks that my friend did not see fit to give this book to his infant as a plaything nor use it as an ash-tray for his burning cigar nor as a teething ring for his mastiff when i lent this book i deemed it as lost i was resigned to the bitterness of the long parting i never thought to look upon its pages again but now that my book is come back to me i rejoice and am exceedingly glad bring hither the fatted morocco and let us rebind the volume and set it on the shelf of honor for this my book was lent and is returned again presently therefore i may return some of the books that i myself have borrowed there he thought that will convey to her the first element of book morality these decorations having been displayed on the walls he bethought himself of the books that should stand on the bedside shelf this is a question that admits of the utmost nicety of discussion some authorities hold that the proper books for a guest-room are of a soporific quality that will induce swift and painless repose this school advises the wealth of nations rome under the caesars the statesman's year-book certain novels of henry james and the letters of queen victoria in three volumes it is plausibly contended that books of this kind cannot be read late at night for more than a few minutes at a time and that they afford useful scraps of information another branch of opinion recommends for bedtime reading short stories volumes of pithy anecdote swift and sparkling stuff that may keep one awake for a space yet will advantage all the sweeter slumber in the end even ghost stories and harrowing matter are maintained seasonable by these pundits this class of reading comprises o henry bret harte leonard merrick ambrose bierce w w jacobs daudet de maupassant and possibly even on a slow train through arkansas that grievous classic of the railway bookstalls whereof its author mr thomas w jackson has said it will sell forever and a thousand years afterward to this might be added another of mr jackson's onslaughts on the human intelligence i'm from texas you can't steer me whereof is said by the author it's like a hard-boiled egg you can't beat it there are other of mr jackson's books whose titles escape memory whereof he has said they are a dynamite for sorrow nothing used to annoy mifflin more than to have some one come in and ask for copies of these works his brother-in-law andrew mcgill the writer once gave him for christmas just to annoy him a copy of on a slow train through arkansas sumptuously bound and gilded in what is known to the trade as dove-colored ooze roger retorted by sending andrew for his next birthday two volumes of brand the iconoclast bound in what robert court's holiday calls embossed toad-skin but that is apart from the story to the consideration of what to put on miss titania's bookshelf roger devoted the delighted hours of the morning several times helen called to him to come down and attend to the shop but he was sitting on the floor unaware of numbed shins poring over the volumes he had carted upstairs for a final culling it will be my great privilege he said to himself to have a young mind to experiment with now my wife delightful creature though she is was well distinctly mature when i had the good fortune to meet her I have never been able properly to supervise her mental processes, but this Chapman girl will come to us wholly unlettered.

Her father said she had been to a fashionable school.

That surely is a guarantee that the delicate tendrils of her mind have never begun to sprout.

John's, Newfoundland, Canada

CanadaA Ghost of the Sierras by Bret Harte.

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A Ghost of the Sierras by Bret Harte.

It was a vast silence of pines, redolent with balsamic breath and muffled with the dry dust of dead bark and matted mosses.

Lying on our backs, we looked upward through a hundred feet of clear, unbroken interval to the first lateral branches that formed the flat canopy above us.

I will have a stenographer there, and you can start dictating your stories, and we shall set the world laughing, putting them in a book." Fisher did, and here's the book.

Twain and Field did not expatriate themselves to the extent of other gifted Americans, Henry James, Bret Harte, Whistler, Abbey, and Sargent.

Yet Twain settled down for months and even years in various European countries, while Field tried, during a hundred days or more, to make a go of it in London before capitulating to climate and home hunger.

Previous glimpses of these two great American humorists during their several sojourns in Europe have come to us almost wholly through their letters to friends at home.

Thou drawest all things, small and great, to thee beside the western gate.

this is what bret harte has written of the great city of san francisco and for the past fortnight i have been wondering what made him do it there is neither serenity nor indifference to be found in these parts and evil would it be for the continents whose wardship were entrusted to so reckless a guardian behold me pitched neck and crop from twenty days of the high seas into the whirl of california deprived of any guidance and left to draw my own conclusions protect me from the wrath of an outraged community if these letters be ever read by american eyes san francisco is a mad city inhabited for the most part by perfectly insane people whose women are of a remarkable beauty When the city of Pekin steamed through the Golden Gate, I saw with great joy that the blockhouse which guarded the mouth of the finest harbor in the world, sir, could be silenced by two gunboats from Hong Kong with safety, comfort, and dispatch.

Also, there was not a single American vessel of war in the harbor.

This may sound bloodthirsty, but remember that I come with a grievance upon me, the grievance of pirated English books.

They sold books from across the water without paying for them, and the snort of delight was fixed in their nostrils for ever by a just providence.

That's why they talk a foreign tongue to-day.

cats is dogs and rabbits is dogs and so's parrots but this here tortoise is an insect so there ain't no charge as the old porter said a hindu is a hindu and a brother to the man who knows his vernacular and a frenchman is french because he speaks his own language but the american has no language he is dialect slang provincialism accent and so forth now that i've heard their voices all the beauty of bret harte is being ruined for me because i find myself catching through the roll of his rhythmical prose the cadence of his peculiar fatherland get an american lady to read to you how santa claus came to simpson's bar and see how much is under her tongue left of the beauty of the original but i'm sorry for bret harte it happened this way A reporter asked me what I thought of the city, and I made answer, suavely, that it was hallowed ground to me because of Bret Hart.

That was true.