In the fourth story, Uncle Jim and Uncle Billy, published much later, Bret Harte takes the subject in a lighter vein. The sacrifice made to friendship is not of life, but of fortune; and though, unquestionably, some men would lay down their lives more easily than they would give up their property, yet the sacrifice does not wear so tragic an aspect.
In Left Out on Lone Star Mountain, among the very best of the later stories, we have a little group of miners held together, inspired, and redeemed from selfishness by the youngest of their number, affectionately spoken of as “The Old Man,” one of those brilliant, fine, lovable natures, rare but not unknown in real life, to which all the virtues seem to come as easily as vice and weakness come to the generality of men.[71]
HE LOOKED CURIOUSLY AT HIS REFLECTION
From “Left Out on Lone Star Mountain”
E. Boyd Smith, del.
The hero of this story plays a part much resembling that of the late James G. Fair, United States Senator from California, and a leading man in the State. Mr. Fair, who was of Scotch-Irish descent, crossed the Plains in 1850 with a company of men who were demoralized by their privations and misfortunes. Though the youngest of the party, being but eighteen years old, Fair, by mere force of natural fitness, became their leader; and it was owing to his determined good nature, energy and high spirits that they finally reached the Pacific Slope. A member of the band afterward wrote: “My comrades became so peevish from the wear upon the system, and ... the absence of accustomed comforts, that they were more like children than men, and at times it was as much as the boy could do to keep them from killing one another.”[72]
The moral of Bret Harte’s stories, it has often been said, is that even bad men have a good side, and are frequently capable of performing noble acts. But this, surely, is only a small part of the lesson, or rather of the inspiration to be derived from his works. In fact most of his heroes are not bad men, but good men. Would it not be far more true to say that the moral of Bret Harte’s stories is very nearly the same as the moral of the New Testament, namely, that the best thing a man can do with his life or anything else that he has, is to give it up,—for love, for honor, for a child, for a friend!