" a new literary weekly which Charles Henry Webb had
recently founded. Bret Harte was not yet famous, but his gifts were
recognized on the Pacific slope, especially by the "Era" group of
writers, the "Golden Era" being a literary monthly of considerable
distinction. Joaquin Miller recalls, from his diary of that period,
having seen Prentice Mulford, Bret Harte, Charles Warren Stoddard, Mark
Twain, Artemus Ward, and others, all assembled there at one time--a
remarkable group, certainly, to be dropped down behind the Sierras so
long ago. They were a hopeful, happy lot, and sometimes received five
dollars for an article, which, of course, seemed a good deal more
precious than a much larger sum earned in another way.

Mark Twain had contributed to the "Era" while still in Virginia City, and
now, with Bret Harte, was ranked as a leader of the group. The two were
much together, and when Harte became editor of the "Californian" he
engaged Clemens as a regular contributor at the very fancy rate of twelve
dollars an article. Some of the brief chapters included to-day in
"Sketches New and Old" were done at this time. They have humor, but are
not equal to his later work, and beyond the Pacific slope they seem to
have attracted little attention.

In "Roughing It" the author tells us how he finally was dismissed from
the "Call" for general incompetency, and presently found himself in the
depths of hard luck, debt, and poverty. But this is only his old habit
of making a story on himself sound as uncomplimentary as possible. The
true version is that the "Call" publisher and Mark Twain had a friendly
talk and decided that it was better for both to break off the connection.
Almost immediately he arranged to write a daily San Francisco letter for
the "Enterprise," for which he received thirty dollars a week. This,
with his earnings from the "Californian," made his total return larger
than before. Very likely he was hard up from time to time--literary men
are often that--but that he was ever in abject poverty, as he would have
us believe, is just a good story and not history.

XXIV.

THE DISCOVERY OF "THE JUMPING FROG"

Mark Twain's daily letters to the "Enterprise" stirred up trouble for him
in San Francisco. He was free, now, to write what he chose, and he
attacked the corrupt police management with such fierceness that, when
copies of the "Enterprise" got back to San Francisco, they started a
commotion at the city hall. Then