er's end was a mystery. The New York Tribune commissioned him to go
to Cuba to report the facts of some Spanish outrages. He sailed from New
York in the steamer, and was last seen alive the night before the vessel
reached Havana. He had made no secret of his mission, but had discussed
it in his frank, innocent way. There were some Spanish military men on
the ship.

Clemens, commenting on the matter, once said:

"It may be that he was not flung into the sea, still the belief was
general that that was what had happened."

In his book Howells refers to the doubt with which Mark Twain was then
received by the polite culture of Boston; which, on the other hand,
accepted Bret Harte as one of its own, forgiving even social
shortcomings.

The reason is not difficult to understand. Harte had made his appeal
with legitimate fiction of the kind which, however fresh in flavor and
environment, was of a sort to be measured and classified. Harte spoke a
language they could understand; his humor, his pathos, his point of view
were all recognizable. It was an art already standardized by a master.
It is no reflection on the genius of Bret Harte to liken his splendid
achievements to those of Charles Dickens. Much of Harte's work is in no
way inferior to that of his great English prototype. Dickens never wrote
a better short story than "The Outcasts of Poker Flats." He never wrote
as good a short story as "The Luck of Roaring Camp." Boston critics
promptly realized these things and gave Harte his correct rating. That
they failed to do this with Mark Twain, lay chiefly in the fact that he
spoke to them in new and startling tongues. His gospels were likely to
be heresies; his literary eccentricities were all unclassified. Of the
ultrafastidious set Howells tells us that Charles Eliot Norton and Prof.
Francis J. Child were about the only ones who accorded him unqualified
approval. The others smiled and enjoyed him, but with that condescension
which the courtier is likely to accord to motley and the cap and bells.
Only the great, simple-hearted, unbiased multitude, the public, which had
no standards but the direct appeal from one human heart to another, could
recognize immediately his mightier heritage, could exalt and place him on
the throne.

LXXXIV

"ROUGHING IT".

Telegram to Redpath:

How in the name of God does a man find his way from here to Amherst,
and when must he start? Give me full particulars, and send a ma