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learned to read Greek sufficiently well to astonish his mother.

      If the Hart family resembled the Alcott family in the matter of misfortunes and privations, so it did, also, in its intellectual atmosphere. Mrs. Hart shared her husband’s passion for literature; and she had a keen, critical faculty, to which, the family think, Bret Harte was much indebted for the perfection of his style. Henry Hart had accumulated a library surprisingly large for a man of his small means, and the whole household was given to the reading not simply of books, but of the best books, and to talking about them. It was a household in which the literary second-rate was unerringly, and somewhat scornfully, discriminated from the first-rate.

      When Bret Harte was only eleven years old he wrote a poem called Autumnal Musings which he sent surreptitiously to the “New York Sunday Atlas,” and the poem was published in the next issue. This was a wonderful feat for a boy of that age, and he was naturally elated by seeing his verses in print; but the family critics pointed out their defects with such unpleasant frankness that the conceit of the youthful poet was nipped in the bud. Many years afterward, Bret Harte said with a laugh, “I sometimes wonder that I ever wrote a line of poetry again.” But the discipline was wholesome, and as he grew older his mother took his literary ambitions more seriously. When he was about sixteen, he wrote a long poem called The Hudson River. It was never published, but Mrs. Hart made a careful study of it; and at her son’s request, wrote out her criticisms at length.

      It will thus be seen that Bret Harte, as an author, far from being an academic, was strictly a home product. He left school at the age of thirteen and went immediately into a lawyer’s office where he remained about a year, and thence into the counting-room of a merchant. He was self-supporting before he reached the age of sixteen. In 1851, as has already been mentioned, his older sister was married; and in 1853 his mother went to California with a party of relatives and friends, in order to make her home there with her elder son, Henry. She had intended to take with her the other two children, Margaret and Francis Brett; but as the daughter was in school, she left the two behind for a few months, and they followed in February, 1854. They travelled by the Nicaragua route, and after a long, tiresome, but uneventful journey, landed safely in San Francisco.[3] No mention of their arrival was made in the newspapers; no guns were fired; no band played; but the youth of eighteen who thus slipped unnoticed into California was the one person, out of the many thousands arriving in those early years, whose coming was a fact of importance.

CHAPTER III

       Table of Contents

BRET HARTE’S WANDERINGS IN CALIFORNIA

       Table of Contents

      Bret Harte and his sister arrived at San Francisco in March, 1854, stayed there one night, and went the next morning to Oakland, across the Bay, where their mother and her second husband, Colonel Andrew Williams, were living. In this house the boy remained about a year, teaching for a while, and afterward serving as clerk in an apothecary’s shop. During this year he began his career as a professional writer, contributing some stories and poems to Eastern magazines.

      Bret Harte, like Thackeray, was fortunate in his stepfather, and if, according to the accepted story, Thackeray’s stepfather was the prototype of Colonel Newcome, the two men must have had much in common. Colonel Williams was born at Cherry Valley in the State of New York, and was graduated at Union College with the Class of 1819. Henry Hart’s class was that of 1820, but the two young men were friends in college. Colonel Williams had seen much of the world, having travelled extensively in Europe early in the century, and he was a cultivated, well-read man. But he was chiefly remarkable for his high standard of honor, and his amiable, chivalrous nature. He was a gentleman of the old school in the best sense, grave but sympathetic, courtly but kind. His generosity was unbounded. Such a man might appear to have been somewhat out of place in bustling California, but his qualities were appreciated there. He was the first Mayor of Oakland, in the year 1857, and was re-elected the following year. Colonel Williams built a comfortable house in Oakland, one of the first, if not the very first in that city in which laths and plaster were used; but land titles in California were extremely uncertain, and after a long and stubborn contest in the courts, Colonel Williams was dispossessed, and lost the house upon which he had expended much time and money. He then took up his residence in San Francisco, where he lived until his return to the East in the year 1871. His wife, Bret Harte’s mother, died at Morristown, New Jersey, April 4, 1875, and was buried in the family lot at Greenwood, New York. The following year he went back to California for a visit to Bret Harte’s sister, Mrs. Wyman, but soon after his arrival died of pneumonia at the age of seventy-six.

      The San Francisco and Oakland papers spoke very highly of Colonel Williams after his death, and one of them closed an account of his life with the following words: “Colonel Williams had that indefinable sweetness of manner which indicates innate refinement and nobility of soul. There was a touch of the antique about him. He seemed a little out of time and place in this hurried age of ours. He belonged to and typified the calmer temper of a former generation. A gentler spirit never walked the earth. He personified all the sweet charities of life. His heart was great, warm and tender, and he died leaving no man in the world his enemy. Colonel Williams was the stepfather of Bret Harte, between whom and himself there existed the most affectionate relations.”

      It was during his first year in California that Bret Harte had that gambling experience which he has related in his Bohemian Days in San Francisco, and which throws so much light on his character that it should be quoted here in part at least:—

      “I was watching roulette one evening, intensely absorbed in the mere movement of the players. Either they were so preoccupied with the game, or I was really older looking than my actual years, but a bystander laid his hand familiarly on my shoulder, and said, as to an ordinary habitué, ‘Ef you’re not chippin’ in yourself, pardner, s’pose you give me a show.’ Now, I honestly believe that up to that moment I had no intention, nor even a desire, to try my own fortune. But in the embarrassment of the sudden address I put my hand in my pocket, drew out a coin and laid it, with an attempt at carelessness, but a vivid consciousness that I was blushing, upon a vacant number. To my horror I saw that I had put down a large coin—the bulk of my possessions! I did not flinch, however; I think any boy who reads this will understand my feeling; it was not only my coin but my manhood at stake. … I even affected to be listening to the music. The wheel spun again; the game was declared, the rake was busy, but I did not move. At last the man I had displaced touched me on the arm and whispered, ‘Better make a straddle and divide your stake this time.’ I did not understand him, but as I saw he was looking at the board, I was obliged to look, too. I drew back dazed and bewildered! Where my coin had lain a moment before was a glittering heap of gold.

      “… ‘Make your game, gentlemen,’ said the croupier monotonously. I thought he looked at me—indeed, everybody seemed to be looking at me—and my companion repeated his warning. But here I must again appeal to the boyish reader in defence of my idiotic obstinacy. To have taken advice would have shown my youth. I shook my head—I could not trust my voice. I smiled, but with a sinking heart, and let my stake remain. The ball again sped round the wheel, and stopped. There was a pause. The croupier indolently advanced his rake and swept my whole pile with others into the bank! I had lost it all. Perhaps it may be difficult for me to explain why I actually felt relieved, and even to some extent triumphant, but I seemed to have asserted my grown-up independence—possibly at the cost of reducing the number of my meals for days; but what of that! … The man who had spoken to me, I think, suddenly realized, at the moment of my disastrous coup, the fact of my extreme youth. He moved toward the banker, and leaning over him whispered a few words. The banker looked up, half impatiently, half kindly—his hand straying tentatively toward the pile of coin. I instinctively knew what he meant, and, summoning my determination, met his eyes with all the indifference I could assume, and walked away.”

      In 1856, being then twenty years old, young

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