CHAPTER IV

THE REAL BRET HARTE

Before taking up the events related to my residence in San Francisco Iwish to give my testimony concerning Bret Harte, maybe the mostinteresting character associated with my sojourn in Humboldt. It wasbefore he was known to fame that I knew him; but I am able to correctsome errors that have been made and I believe can contribute to a morejust estimate of him as a literary artist and a man.

He has been misjudged as to character. He occasionally was a remarkable personality,who interpreted an era of unusual interest, vital and picturesque, witha result unparalleled in literary annals. When he died in England in1902 the English papers paid him very high tribute. The _LondonSpectator_ exclaimed of him: "No writer of the present day has struck sopowerful and original a note as he has sounded." This is a very unusualacknowledgment from a source not given to the superlative, and fills uswith wonder as to what manner of man and what sort of training had ledto it.