LITMIR.BIZ

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several sons in the family, and one or two of them were older than their tutor. The next year he went to Humboldt Bay in Humboldt County, on the upper coast of California, about two hundred and fifty miles north of San Francisco. Thence he made numerous trips as express messenger on stages running eastward to Trinity County, and northward to Del Norte, which, as the name implies, is the extreme upper county in the State. The experience was a valuable one, and it was concerning this period of Bret Harte’s career that his friend, Charles Warren Stoddard, wrote: “He bore a charmed life. Probably his youth was his salvation, for he ran a thousand risks, yet seemed only to gain in health and spirits.”

      The post of express messenger was especially dangerous. Bret Harte’s predecessor was shot through the arm by a highwayman; his successor was killed. The safe containing the treasure carried by Wells, Fargo and Company, who did practically all the express business in California, was always heavily chained to the box of the coach, and sometimes, when a particularly large amount of gold had to be conveyed, armed guards were carried inside of the coach. For the stage to be “held up” by highwaymen was a common occurrence, and the danger from breakdowns and floods was not small. In the course of a few months between the towns of Visalia and Kern River the overland stage broke the legs of three several drivers. It was a frequent thing for the stage to cross a stream, suddenly become a river, with the horses swimming, a strong current running through the coach itself, and the passengers perched on the seats to escape being swept away.[4]

      With these dangers of flood and field to encounter, with precipices to skirt, with six half-broken horses to control, and with the ever-present possibility of serving as a target for “road-agents,” it may be imagined that the California stage-driver was no common man, and the type is preserved in the character of Yuba Bill. He can be compared only with Colonel Starbottle and Jack Hamlin, and Jack Hamlin was one of the few men whom Yuba Bill condescended to treat as an equal. Their meeting in Gabriel Convoy is historic: “ ‘Barkeep—hist that pizen over to Jack. Here’s to ye agin, ole man. But I’m glad to see ye!’ The crowd hung breathless over the two men—awestruck and respectful. It was a meeting of the gods. None dared speak.”

      “Yuba Bill,” writes Mr. Chesterton, “is not convivial; it might almost be said that he is too great even to be sociable. A circle of quiescence and solitude, such as that which might ring a saint or a hermit, rings this majestic and profound humorist. His jokes do not flow from him, like those of Mr. Weller, sparkling and continual like the play of a fountain in a pleasure garden; they fall suddenly and capriciously, like a crash of avalanche from a great mountain. Tony Weller has the noisy humor of London. Yuba Bill has the silent humor of the earth.” Then the critic quotes Yuba Bill’s rebuke to the passenger who has expressed a too-confident opinion as to the absence of the expected highwaymen: “ ‘You ain’t puttin’ any price on that opinion, air ye?’ inquired Bill politely.

      “ ‘No.’

      “ ’Cos thar’s a comic paper in ’Frisco pays for them things, and I’ve seen worse things in it.’ ”

      Even better, perhaps, is Yuba Bill’s reply to Judge Beeswinger, who rashly betrayed some over-consciousness of his importance as a member of the State Assembly. “ ‘Any political news from below, Bill?’ he asked, as the latter slowly descended from his lofty perch, without, however, any perceptible coming down of mien or manner. ‘Not much,’ said Bill, with deliberate gravity. ‘The President o’ the United States hezn’t bin hisself sens you refoosed that seat in the Cabinet. The gin’ral feelin’ in perlitical circles is one o’ regret.’ ”

      “To be rebuked thus,” Mr. Chesterton continues, “is like being rebuked by the pyramids or by the starry heavens. There is about Yuba Bill this air of a pugnacious calm, a stepping back to get his distance for a shattering blow, which is like that of Dr. Johnson at his best. And the effect is inexpressibly increased by the background and the whole picture which Bret Harte paints so powerfully—the stormy skies, the sombre gorge, the rocking and spinning coach, and high above the feverish passengers the huge, dark form of Yuba Bill, a silent mountain of humor.”

      After his service as expressman, Bret Harte went to a town called Union, about three hundred miles north of San Francisco, where he learned the printer’s trade in the office of the “Humboldt Times.” He also taught school again in Union, and for the second time acted as clerk in a drug store. Speaking of his experience in this capacity, Mr. Pemberton, his English biographer, gravely says, “I have heard English physicians express wonder at his grasp of the subject.” One wonders, in turn, if Bret Harte did not do a little hoaxing in this line. “To the end of his days,” writes Mr. Pemberton, “he could speak with authority as to the virtues and properties of medicines.” Young Harte had a wonderful faculty of picking up information, and no doubt his two short terms of service as a compounder of medicines were not thrown away upon him. But Bret Harte was the last person in the world to pose as an expert, and it seems probable that the extent of his knowledge was fairly described in the story How Reuben Allen Saw Life in San Francisco. That part of this story which deals with the drug clerk is so plainly autobiographical, and so characteristic of the author, that a quotation from it will not be out of place:—

      “It was near midnight, the hour of closing, and the junior partner was alone in the shop. He felt drowsy; the mysterious incense of the shop, that combined essence of drugs, spice, scented soap, and orris root—which always reminded him of the Arabian nights—was affecting him. He yawned, and then, turning away, passed behind the counter, took down a jar labelled ‘Glycyrr. Glabra,’ selected a piece of Spanish licorice, and meditatively sucked it. …

“He was just nineteen, he had early joined the emigration to California, and after one or two previous light-hearted essays at other occupations, for which he was singularly unfitted, he had saved enough to embark on his present venture, still less suited to his temperament. … A slight knowledge of Latin as a written language, an American schoolboy’s acquaintance with chemistry and natural philosophy, were deemed sufficient by his partner, a regular physician, for practical cooperation in the vending of drugs and putting up of prescriptions. He knew the difference between acids and alkalis and the peculiar results which attended their incautious combination. But he was excessively deliberate, painstaking and cautious. There was no danger of his poisoning anybody through haste or carelessness, but it was possible that an urgent ‘case’ might have succumbed to the disease while he was putting up the remedy. … In those days the ‘heroic’ practice of medicine was in keeping with the abnormal development of the country; there were ‘record’ doses of calomel and quinine, and he had once or twice incurred the fury of local practitioners by sending back their prescriptions with a modest query.”

      SAN FRANCISCO, NOVEMBER, 1844

       J. C. Ward, del.

      It was doubtless Bret Harte’s experience in the drug store which suggested the story of Liberty Jones, whose discovery of an arsenical spring in the forest was the means of transforming that well-made, but bony and sallow Missouri girl into a beautiful woman, with well-rounded limbs, rosy cheeks, lustrous eyes and glossy hair.

      It has been a matter of some discussion whether Bret Harte ever worked as a miner or not; and the evidence upon the point is not conclusive. But it is hard to believe that he did not try his luck at gold-seeking, when everybody else was trying, and his narrative How I Went to the Mines seems to have the ear-marks of an autobiographical sketch. It is regarded as such by his sisters; and the modest, deprecating manner in which the storyteller’s adventures are related, serves to confirm that impression.

      Of all his experiences in California, those which gave him the most pleasure seem to have been his several short but fruitful terms of service as schoolmaster and tutor. His knowledge of children, being based upon sympathy, became both acute and profound. How many thousand million times have children gone to school of a morning and found the master awaiting them, and yet who but Bret Harte has ever described the exact manner of their approach!

      “They came in their usual desultory fashion—the fashion of country school-children

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