Raggedy! Raggedy! Raggedy Man!
[¹] By permission of The Century Co.
FRANCIS BRET HARTE.
THE POET OF THE MINING CAMP AND THE WESTERN MOUNTAINS.
HE turbulent mining camps of California, with their vicious hangers-on, have been embalmed for future generations by the unerring genius of Bret Harte, who sought to reveal the remnants of honor in man, and loveliness in woman, despite the sins and vices of the mining towns of our Western frontier thirty or forty years ago. His writings have been regarded with disfavor by a religious class of readers because of the frequent occurrence of rough phrases and even profanity which he employs in his descriptions. It should be remembered, however, that a faithful portrait of the conditions and people which he described could hardly have been presented in more polite language than that employed.
Bret Harte was born in Albany, New York, in 1839. His father was a scholar of ripe culture, and a teacher in the Albany Female Seminary. He died poor when Bret was quite young, consequently the education of his son was confined to the common schools of the city. When only seventeen years of age, young Harte, with his widowed mother, emigrated to California. Arriving in San Francisco he walked to the mines of Sonora and there opened a school which he taught for a short time. Thus began his self-education in the mining life which furnished the material for his early literature. After leaving his school he became a miner, and at odd times learned to set type in the office of one of the frontier papers. He wrote sketches of the strange life around him, set them up in type himself, and offered the proofs to the editor, believing that in this shape they would be more certain of acceptance. His aptitude with his pen secured him a position on the paper, and in the absence of the editor he once controlled the journal and incurred popular wrath for censuring a little massacre of Indians by the leading citizens of the locality, which came near bringing a mob upon him.
The young adventurer,—for he was little else at this time,—also served as mounted messenger of an express company and as express agent in several mountain towns, which gave him a full knowledge of the picturesque features of mining life. In 1857 he returned to San Francisco and secured a position as compositor on a weekly literary journal. Here again he repeated his former trick of setting up and submitting several spirited sketches of mining life in type. These were accepted and soon earned him an editorial position on the “Golden Era.” After this he made many contributions to the daily papers and his tales of Western life began to attract attention in the East. In 1858, he married, which put an end to his wanderings. He attempted to publish a newspaper of his own, “The Californian,” which was bright and worthy to live, but failed for want of proper business management.