NEW YORK EVENING WORLD
May 6, 1902, p. 10

MARK TWAIN TELLS OF CALIFORNIA DAYS

Mark Twain was an old-time friend and a great admirer of Bret Harte. He was much grieved to hear of Mr. Harte's sudden death. Mr. Twain said:

"Bret Harte and I were intimate friends many years ago in San Francisco. He was the private secretary to the Superintendent of the Mint, and I was in on the third story over his head as a reporter for the Morning Call.

"In the first year of this acquaintance, if I remember correctly, he was the editor of the Californian, a literary weekly journal.

"He made a local name in that capacity through writing attractive sketches and satires, and presently was made editor of the Overland. This happened while I was in the Sandwich Islands in 1866. When I returned after a long absence I found that he had become famous all over the world through his 'Heathen Chinee.'

"He said 'The Luck of Roaring Camp' was the salvation of his literary career. It placed him securely upon a literary road which was more to his taste.

"So far as I know none of my intimates of thirty-eight years ago in San Francisco are now living, except Noah Brooks, Charles Warren Stoddard, professor of English in the Catholic University of Washington, and Charles Henry Webb.

"Bret Harte came east in 1870 and his progress was marked from station to station by telegraph, as the progress of a Prince would be.

"I think he made on attempt to picture Eastern life and that was not regarded as successful.

"A man must live the life before he can write it. Bret Harte wisely fell back upon the life he had led in California, and he remained faithful to it ever after. He was successful in finding such details of that life as he had lived and his pen pictures of California camps and mountain scenery has seldom been equalled and never surpassed."