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To be sure, they felt in themselves uncommon talents for business and speaking, which were to reimburse them. Harte has a great poetical work to publish, before it be long; he has shown me some parts of it.
'D'ailleurs', there seems to be a total suspension of all business, till the meeting of the parliament, and then 'Signa canant'. I am very glad that at this time you are out of it: and for reasons that I need not mention: you would certainly have been sent for over, and, as before, not paid for your journey. Poor Harte is very ill, and condemned to the Hot well at Bristol.
On the streets of San Francisco, however, Bret Harte was always a notable figure, from the fact that the average man wore "slops," devoid alike of style or cut, and usually of shiny broadcloth. Broad-brimmed black felt hats were the customary headgear, completing a most funereal costume. Mr. Harte impressed me as being singularly modest and utterly devoid of any form of affectation.
This here party claimed the misfortune of bein' a younger son, whatever that is, and is grubstaked to a ranch by his people back home. Havin' acquired an intimate knowledge of the West by readin' Bret Harte, and havin' assim'lated the secrets of ranchin' by correspondence school, he is fitted, ample, to teach us natives a thing or two and he does it.
Read aloud, though alone, and read articulately and distinctly, as if you were reading in public, and on the most important occasion. Recite pieces of eloquence, declaim scenes of tragedies to Mr. Harte, as if he were a numerous audience.
You have lost time by your illness; you must regain it now or never. I therefore most earnestly desire, for your own sake, that for these next six months, at least six hours every morning, uninterruptedly, may be inviolably sacred to your studies with Mr. Harte.
You never could be sure of Harte; he could only by chance be caught in earnest about anything or anybody. Except for those slight recognitions of literary, traits in his talk with Lowell, nothing remained from his conversation but the general criticism he passed upon his brilliant fellow-Hebrew Heine, as "rather scorbutic."
But they have in mind the Rip Van Winkle of Jefferson and Boucicault, not the rather attenuated story of Irving, which as far as the twenty years of sleep went was borrowed from an old German legend. Mark Twain and Bret Harte, however, will always be bracketed with Washington Irving. Of the three I incline to the opinion that Mark Twain did the broadest and strongest work.
They were fresh and virile, original in treatment, with real men and women using a new vocabulary, with humor and pathos delightfully blended. They moved on a stage beautifully set, with a background of heroic grandeur. No wonder that California and Bret Harte became familiar household words.
American humour has its own peculiar excellence, but it has nothing in particular to do with Bret Harte. American humour is purely exaggerative; Bret Harte's humour was sympathetic and analytical. In order fully to understand this, it is necessary to realise, genuinely and thoroughly, that there is such a thing as an international difference in humour.
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