Famous Authors (Men). E. F. Harkins
proof on the paper. She sent word to him that if matter as indecent as 'The Luck of Roaring Camp' was to be printed in The Overland Monthly she could not retain her place as an employee of the paper. Harte read the story over again in proof to see where the indecencies were, but could find none. Then he took it to the owner of the paper, and asked his opinion of it. The owner took it home and read it to his wife. It made her cry, and she thought it was a powerful production, but she agreed with the proof-reader that it was too daring in its conception, and too frank in its details even for the not-over particular society which inhabited California. Harte heard her judgment with amazement. He was utterly unable to see anything improper in the story. Finally the owner of the paper so far went over to the side of the story's critics as to say that he thought the story would have to be left out. Harte took a day and a night to think the matter over, and then he announced his own decision. He said that if the story was left out of that month's issue of The Overland Monthly he would himself insist on being left out of all connection with the paper in the future. There was no quarrel. He simply was certain that his judgment was good, and felt that if it was considered bad on this occasion by the owner, he would never be able to suit him in the future. Finally, after the matter had been placed on this definite basis, the owner made up his mind to let the story run." We have met the account of the momentous difficulty in a slightly different form, but the account which we have repeated may be accepted as substantially correct.
"The Luck of Roaring Camp" did not please the Californians, and it seemed for some time as if the censure of the feminine critics would be justified popularly; but when the flattering opinions of the Eastern readers were reported, the gold hunters changed their minds. No doubt they were astonished to hear that a Boston publishing house, at that time the most powerful organization of its kind in the land, had offered to accept anything the author might offer at his own terms.
Harte was busy sending provisions to the snowbound camps in the Sierras in the fall of 1868, so that his next story, "The Outcasts of Poker Flat," made its appearance as late as January, 1869. That same year, too, "Plain Language from Truthful James," popularly known as "The Heathen Chinee," came to delight the reading public; and since that time Bret Harte's fame has remained more or less brilliant.
For a time he filled the chair of Modern Literature in the University of California. In 1871 he came East. The journey was a triumph. Nothing like it ever occurred before, or has occurred since. Once in the East, The Atlantic Monthly agreed to pay him one thousand dollars a month for a poem and a short story; but the author soon found the agreement irksome. He lectured and wrote at his leisure in this country until 1878, when he was appointed United States Consul at Crefeld, Germany, and two years later he was sent to Glasgow. His term there closed in 1885, and ever since he has made London his home.
However, he has always been Californian in his stories. His latest offering, "Under the Redwoods," is as reflective of the growing days of the West as are early masterpieces like "Tennessee's Partner" and "Miggles." His star may be a trifle lower in the heavens than it was when he went abroad, but it is still of the first magnitude.
MARK TWAIN
Mark Twain's real name is Samuel Langhorne Clemens. There is a story to the effect that one of his ancestors, by name Gregory Clement, an adherent of Cromwell, added his voice to the condemnation of Charles I. and was beheaded for it by Charles II. However, it is neither as Clement nor as Clemens that the most celebrated of contemporaneous American authors is, or has been, popularly known, but by the pen-name of Mark Twain, which he adopted when he was piloting on the Mississippi, more than forty years ago.
In fun or in earnest—it is hard to fathom his moods—Mr. Clemens said lately that he was working on an autobiography which must not be opened until he has been in his grave for a century. So far as the main facts are concerned, however, the humorist's autobiography is already an open book. It has been chronicled piece by piece in a hundred magazines and in a thousand newspapers since 1868, when "Innocents Abroad" appeared, up to the present day. Probably no other living author has been so beset by the requests of editors and the importunities of reporters; and assuredly no other living author has been more amiable or more liberal in his responses. No, a good portion of the autobiography of Mr. Clemens, or Mark Twain—we shall use each name impartially—will be submitted to the public within a hundred hours after his death—and may that inevitable conclusion be far, far off!
As a man and as a writer Mr. Clemens has invariably carried the colors of the typical American. A stern sense of duty and of honor, a seldom absent sense of humor, inexhaustible energy, dauntless pluck, unfeigned simplicity and abiding sympathy and fidelity, are the salient characteristics of the typical American—of Mr. Clemens. At the same time, above and beyond the writer's unexcelled powers of observation and richness of imagination is his fine sense of artistry. "Mark Twain's humor will live forever," Mr. Howells is reported to have said some years ago, "because of its artistic qualities. Mark Twain portrays and interprets real types, not only with exquisite appreciation and sympathy, but with a force and truth of drawing that makes them permanent." So fastidious a critic as Prof. Barrett Wendell has lately dwelt on the constant and irresistible charm of Huckleberry Finn.
Mr. Clemens was born in a little Missouri village named Florida on Nov. 30, 1835. His father, John Marshall Clemens, of a good Virginia family, was one of the pioneers who, early in the century, crossed the Alleghanies and sought new fortunes in the unsettled West. His mother, whose maiden name was Elizabeth Lampton, also, like her husband, came of good English stock. Her forefathers had plunged into the wilds with Daniel Boone; and she herself has been described as "one of those beautiful, graceful, and vivacious Kentucky girls who have contributed so much to the reputation of that fortunate State." A cousin of Mr. Clemens, by the way, who was one of the humorist's playmates sixty years ago, is the Rev. Eugene Joshua Lampton, who, by some of the people in Missouri, is called "the Bishop of the diocese." Elder Lampton is the possessor of the original subscription list which Mr. Clemens carried when he was a newspaper boy in Hannibal. But this is reaching ahead a little.
They say that Mr. Clemens's mother was not only remarkably winsome but remarkably intelligent. When the author was a youngster one of his relatives said of him: "He's a perfect little human kaleidoscope." "Yes," added another, "and he gets that from his mother." Samuel's mother could "write well," which was no small accomplishment in the south-west in the thirties.
When Samuel was about nine years old his father decided to move to Hannibal, in the same State. The prime cause of this immigration was the failure of the elder Clemens to make Salt River navigable; hence, as one writer has suggested, the probable origin of the old synonym for disaster, "gone up Salt River."
Young Clemens was sent to school in Hannibal. Some of his schoolmates are living in the old town to-day. He seems to have enjoyed the rule of two teachers, Miss Newcomb and Miss Lucy Davis. Physically, he was not a strong boy, but intellectually he seems always to have been more than a match for any boy of his age. He had two brothers, Orion, who was considerably older, and Henry, who was the youngest of them all. Samuel attended school until his father died in 1847. The death of the father, who had just been elected county judge, was a hard blow to the family. After the death of his father, the subject of our sketch went to work for the local newspaper as a carrier. Afterward he served as "devil" and type-setter, and then, having completed his apprenticeship and thinking to better himself elsewhere, he set off on foot for the East. Doing odd jobs at the case and the press, he finally reached Philadelphia. Thence he went to New York. But the East did not please him, and at seventeen he was back in Hannibal.
He was now on his uppers, as the phrase is, and, in addition to its adventurous side, the financial side of steamboat life on the Mississippi magnetized him. There, for instance, was the pilot, the guide of the great smoking craft, a man who knew everything thought worth knowing, a man looked up to by every merchant, every traveler and every desperado. Samuel determined to become a pilot, and the picturesque Capt. Horace E. Bixby took him under his wing. In his "Life on the Mississippi" Mark Twain describes with all his eloquence the interesting and exciting life of a pilot on the treacherous