I read the other day, had compared him on this ground with old
Mr. Weller. It would be difficult to find a comparison indicating a more
completely futile instinct for literature. Tony Weller and Yuba Bill
were both coach-drivers, and this fact establishes a resemblance just
about as much as the fact that Jobson in "Rob Roy" and George Warrington
in "Pendennis" were both lawyers; or that Antonio and Mr. Pickwick were
both merchants; or that Sir Galahad and Sir Willoughby Patten were both
knights. Tony Weller is a magnificent grotesque. He is a gargoyle, and
his mouth, like the mouths of so many gargoyles, is always open. He is
garrulous, exuberant, flowery, preposterously sociable. He holds that
great creed of the convivial, the creed which is at the back of so much
that is greatest in Dickens, the creed that eternity begins at ten
o'clock at night, and that nights last forever. But Yuba Bill is a
figure of a widely different character. He is not convivial; it might
almost be said that he is too great ever 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 humourist. His jokes do not flow
upon him like those of Mr. Weller, sparkling, continual, and deliberate,
like the play of a fountain in a pleasure garden; they fall suddenly and
capriciously, like a crash of avalanches from a great mountain. Tony
Weller has the noisy humour of London, Yuba Bill has the silent humour
of the earth.

One of the worst of the disadvantages of the rich and random fertility
of Bret Harte is the fact that it is very difficult to trace or recover
all the stories that he has written. I have not within reach at the
moment the story in which the character of Yuba Bill is exhibited in its
most solemn grandeur, but I remember that it concerned a ride on the
San Francisco stage coach, a difficulty arising from storm and darkness,
and an intelligent young man who suggested to Yuba Bill that a certain
manner of driving the coach in a certain direction might minimise the
dangers of the journey. A profound silence followed the intelligent
young man's suggestion, and then (I quote from memory) Yuba Bill
observed at last:

"Air you settin' any value on that remark?"

The young man professed not fully to comprehend him, and Yuba Bill
continued reflectively:

"'Cos there's a comic paper in 'Frisco pays for them things, and I've
seen worse in it."

To be rebuked thus i