[Illustration:  FRANCIS BRET HARTE]

Through Starr King’s interest, his parishioner Robert B. Swain, Superintendent of the Mint, had early in 1864 appointed Harte as his private secretary, at a salary of two hundred dollars a month, with duties that allowed considerable leisure.  This was especially convenient, as a year or so before he had married, and additional income was indispensable.

In May, 1864, Harte left the Golden Era, joining Charles Henry Webb and others in a new literary venture, the Californian.  It was a brilliant weekly.  Among the contributors were Mark Twain, Charles Warren Stoddard, and Prentice Mulford.  Harte continued his delightful “Condensed Novels” and contributed poems, stories, sketches, and book reviews.  “The Society on the Stanislaus,” “John Brown of Gettysburg,” and “The Pliocene Skull” belong to this period.

In the “Condensed Novels” Harte surpassed all parodists.  With clever burlesque, there was both appreciation and subtle criticism.  As Chesterton says, “Bret Harte’s humor was sympathetic and analytical.  The wild, sky-breaking humor of America has its fine qualities, but it must in the nature of things be deficient in two qualities—­reverence and sympathy—­and these two qualities were knit into the closest texture of Bret Harte’s humor.”

At this time Harte lived a quiet domestic life.  He wrote steadily.  He loved to write, but he was also obliged to.  Literature is not an overgenerous paymaster, and with a growing family expenses tend to increase in a larger ratio than income.

Harte’s sketches based on early experiences are interesting and amusing.  His life in Oakland was in many ways pleasant, but he evidently retained some memories that made him enjoy indulging in a sly dig many years after.  He gives the pretended result of scientific investigation made in the far-off future as to the great earthquake that totally engulfed San Francisco.  The escape of Oakland seemed inexplicable, but a celebrated German geologist ventured to explain the phenomenon by suggesting that “there are some things that the earth cannot swallow.”

My last recollection of Harte, of a purely personal nature, was of an occurrence in 1866, when he was dramatic critic of the Morning Call at the time I was doing a little reporting on the same paper.  It happened that a benefit was arranged for some charity.  “Nan, the Good-for-Nothing,” was to be given by a number of amateurs.  The Nan asked me to play Tom, and I had insufficient firmness to decline.  After the play, when my face was reasonably clean, I dropped into the Call office, yearning for a word of commendation from Harte.  I thought he knew that I had taken the part, but he would not give me the satisfaction of referring to it.  Finally I mentioned, casually like, that I was Tom, whereat he feigned surprise, and remarked in his pleasant voice, “Was that you?  I thought they had sent to some theater and hired a supe.”