At the close of 1857 he indulged in a brief retrospect, and an emphatic statement of his determination for the future.
After referring to the fact that he was a tutor at a salary of twenty-five dollars a month and board, and that a year before he was unemployed, at the close he writes: "In these three hundred and sixty-five days I have again put forth a feeble essay toward fame and perhaps fortune. I have tried literature, albeit in a humble way. I have written some passable prose and it has been successfully published. The conviction is forced on me by observation, and not by vain enthusiasm, that I am fit for nothing else. Perhaps I may succeed; if not, I can at least make the trial. Therefore I consecrate this year, or as much as God may grant for my services, to honest, heartfelt, sincere labor and devotion to this occupation. God help me! May I succeed!"
Harte profited by his experience in tutoring my two boy friends, gaining local color quite unlike that of the Sierra foothills. Humboldt is also on the grand scale and its physical characteristics and its type of manhood were fresh and inspiring.
His familiarity with the marsh and the sloughs 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 was foreign to his nature; so he was thought devoid of spirit and strength. But occasion brought out the unsuspected. There had been a long and trying Indian war in and around Humboldt. The feeling against the red men was very bitter. It culminated in a wanton and cowardly attack on a tribe of peaceful Indians encamped on an island opposite Eureka, and men, women, and children were ruthlessly killed. Harte was temporarily in charge of the paper and he denounced the outrage in unmeasured terms. The better part of the community sustained him, but a violent minority resented his strictures and he was seriously threatened and in no little danger. Happily he escaped, but the incident resulted in his return to San Francisco. The massacre occurred on February 5, 1860, which fixes the approximate time of Harte's becoming identified with San Francisco.
His experience was of great advantage to him in that he had learned to do something for which there was a demand. He could not earn much as a compositor, but his wants were simple and he could earn something. He soon secured a place on the Golden Era, and it became the doorway to his career. He was soon transferred to the editorial department and contributed freely.
For four years he continued on the Golden Era. These were years of growth and increasing accomplishment. He did good work and made good friends. Among those whose interest he awakened were Mrs. Jessie Benton Frémont and Thomas Starr King. Both befriended and encouraged him. In the critical days when California hung in the balance between the North and the South, and Starr King, by his eloquence, fervor, and magnetism, seemed to turn the scale, Bret Harte did his part in support of the friend he loved. Lincoln had called for a hundred thousand volunteers, and at a mass meeting Harte contributed a noble poem, "The Reveille," which thrillingly read by Starr King brought the mighty audience to its feet with cheers for the Union. He wrote many virile patriotic poems at this period.
In March, 1864, Starr King, of the glowing heart and golden tongue, preacher, patriot, and hero, fell at his post, and San Francisco mourned him and honored him as seldom falls to the lot of man. At his funeral the Federal authorities ordered the firing of a salute from the forts in the harbor, an honor, so far as I know, never before accorded a private citizen.
Bret Harte wrote a poem of rare beauty in expression of his profound grief and his heartfelt appreciation: