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POEMS AND STORIES

BY

BRET HARTE

SELECTED AND EDITED FOR SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES WITH AN INTRODUCTION

BY

CHARLES SWAIN THOMAS, A.M.

Head of the English Department in the
Newton (Mass.) High School

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WHILE Bret Harte has been famous for nearly half a century, comparatively few students of the present generation have any conception of the amount or the versatility of his writings. His collected works in the Riverside Edition comprise nineteen volumes, and embrace sketches, essays, short stories, novels, poems, and one drama. In order to give students of school and college some adequate idea of the extent and variety and method of this work, this volume of selections has been prepared. It is hoped that the Introduction and the Notes will suggest further reading and thus acquaint the student, not only with the author's art, but also with the incidents and characters of that romantic civilization of California which is rapidly passing away from the memory of the living.

For the biographical data of the Introduction the editor is largely indebted to Henry C. Merwin's Life of Bret Harte. C. S. T.

Newton, Massachusetts,
June, 1912.

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INTRODUCTION

BRET HARTE

1836-1902

If we were asked to account for the breadth of sympathy which Bret Harte displayed in his life and writing, we should undoubtedly be aided in our answer by the knowledge that his paternal grandfather was a Jew, his paternal grandmother a member of the Dutch Church, his father a Catholic, and his mother an Episcopalian. His wide experience in travel, both at home and abroad, his extensive acquaintance with men of various ranks- from the roughest miner of the Far West to the most courtly and the most cultivated men of America and of Europe-all this helped to deepen and to widen this cosmopolitan attitude. Deeply immersed as he was for years in the spirit that the FortyNiners created, Bret Harte never allowed the provincialism of his surroundings to deaden the force of this liberal sympathy.

Ancestry and Boyhood

Francis Brett Harte - such was his baptismal name was born in Albany, New York, on August 25, 1836. When as a young man he entered upon his career as a journalist and short-story writer, he dropped the Francis, clipped the final t from Brett, and won renown under the shortened name of Bret Harte. And as such he will always be known.

Bret Harte's father's name was Henry Harte. The father was educated at Union College, Schenectady, and became an accomplished scholar, especially proficient as a linguist.

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