I found the opportunity to tell him that Jack Oakhurst was my favorite hero, and to ask why scampish heroes were so much more interesting to read about than the virtuous.
“I cannot tell you why,” was Bret Harte’s answer, “but there is no doubt about the fact. I have been asked to give a lecture; I refused because I couldn’t think of a subject. Now you have given me an idea. I will write a lecture about Bad People I have known, if you will deliver it for me!”
During the following summer Bret Harte was at Newport, where he wrote some of his finest poems. He was
FRANCIS BRET HARTE
From a photograph by Beardsley
much at our house and went with my mother to the meetings of the Town and Country Club, a literary association of her founding, which under her guidance flourished for some score of years.
During the season of 1875 my mother and I passed some gay weeks in Washington. We stayed at Wormley’s, hard by the lodgings of Uncle Sam Ward, who now brought me, instead of sugar plums and playthings, visitors and invitations; he was persona grata wherever good company was at a premium, and very popular in the capital. These were the palmy days of Washington society, before it grew rich and formal. Cosmopolitan as it always had been, it then had the cordial, informal flavor of a Southern city. The ladies of the Cabinet were at home on Wednesday afternoons, when everybody was free to call. Mrs. Hamilton Fish, wife of the Secretary of State, was most punctilious about returning all visits in person. One afternoon her carriage stopped before a humble house whose door was opened by a woman straight from the washtub, her sleeves rolled up, her arms wet with soapsuds. Mrs. Fish recognized in the washerwoman a person who had called on one of her reception days. At sight of the great lady in her carriage, the working woman burst into tears.
“If you did not wish me to call upon you, why did you come to see me?” Mrs. Fish asked kindly, and after a brief visit took her departure.