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 home thereafter was London, where he
continued his literary work until his death in March, 1902.
His complete works comprise nineteen volumes. His patriotic verse is
fervid, his idyls are graceful and his humorous verse delightful. The
short story he made anew.
Harte's instincts and habits were good. He had the artistic temperament
and some of its incidental weaknesses. He acknowledged himself
"constitutionally improvident," and a debt-burdened life is not easy.
His later years were pathetic. Those who knew and appreciated him
remember him fondly. California failing to know him, wrongs herself.
Charles A. Murdock.
Preface
A desire to obtain, at first hand, any possible information in regard to
reminiscences of Bret Harte, Mark Twain and others of the little coterie
of writers, who in the early fifties visited the mining camps of
California and through stories that have become classics, played a
prominent part in making "California" a synonym for romance, led to
undertaking the tramp of which this brief narrative is a record. The
writer met with unexpected success, having the good fortune to meet men,
all over eighty years of age, who had known - in some cases intimately
Bret Harte, Mark Twain, "Dan de Quille," Prentice Mulford, Bayard Taylor
and Horace Greeley.
It seems imperative that a relation of individual experiences - however
devoid of stirring incident and adventure - should be written in the
first person. At the same time, the writer of this unpretentious story
of a summer's tramp cannot but feel that he owes his readers - should he
have any an apology for any avoidable egotism. His excuse is that, no
twit notwithstanding ding the glamour attaching to the old mining towns,
it is almost incredible how little is known of them by the average
Californian; for the Eastern tourist there is more excuse, since the
foot-hills of the Sierras lie outside the beaten tracks of travel.
