is shown in "The Man on
the Beach" and the "Dedlow Marsh Stories," and this affords fine
opportunity for judging of the part played by knowledge and by
imagination in his literary work. His descriptions are photographic in
their accuracy. The flight of a flock of sandpipers, the flowing tides,
the white line of the bar at the mouth of the bay--all are exact. But
the locations and relations irrelevant to the story are wholly ignored.
The characters and happenings are purely imaginary. He is the artist
using his experiences and his fancy as his colors, and the minimum of
experience and small observation suffice. His perception of character is
marvelous. He pictures the colonel, his daughters, the spruce
lieutenant, and the Irish deserter with such familiarity that the reader
would think that he had spent most of his life in a garrison, and his
ability to portray vividly life in the mines, where his actual
experience was so very slight, is far better understood.

Many of the occurrences of those far-away days have faded from my mind,
but one of them, of considerable significance to two lives, is quite
clear. Uniontown had been the county-seat, and there the _Humboldt
Times_ was published; but Eureka, across the bay, had outgrown her older
sister and captured both the county-seat and the only paper in the
county. In frantic effort to sustain her failing prestige Uniontown
projected a rival paper and the _Northern Californian_ was spoken into
being. My father was a half owner, and I coveted the humble position of
printer's devil. One journeyman could set the type, and on Wednesday and
Saturday, respectively, run off on a hand-press the outside and the
inside of the paper, but a boy or a low-priced man was needed to roll
the forms and likewise to distribute the type. I looked upon it as the
first rung on the ladder of journalism, and I was about to put my foot
thereon when the pathetic figure of Bret Harte presented itself applying
for the job, causing me to put my foot on my hopes instead. He seemed to
want it and need it so much more than I did that I turned my hand to
other pursuits, while he mounted the ladder with cheerful alacrity and
skipped up several rungs, very promptly learning to set type and
becoming a very acceptable assistant editor.

In a community where popular heroes are apt to be loud and aggressive,
the quiet man who thinks more than he talks is adjudged effeminate.
Harte was always modest, and boasting w