BRET HARTE AND THE DEATH RATE.

Globe, Volume V, Issue 564, 8 April 1876, Page 3

BRET HARTE AND THE DEATH RATE.

Bret Harte was lecturing in Pennsylvania a short time ago. At one of his appointments he felt very much depressed. It is a peculiarity of humorists, we are told, to be unaccountably melancholy and times. Harte was in this mood now. One of the committee went in back of the scenes to see him, and the depressed humourist welcomed him as a gleam of unusual good sunshine. They shook hands—Harte earnestly, and the com-mittee-man decorously. ‘Mr Harte,’ he said gravely, ‘youwill find this an unusually healthy city. ’ ‘Ah ! ’ said the pleased humourist. ‘Yes; the death rate is one a day.’ At this Juncture Harte took the committee man by the arm, and hurriedly asked—- ‘ Is he dead ? ’ * Dead ! ’ ejaculated the committee man, 1 Who dead ? ’ * Why, the man for to-day ? ’ was the grave reply. The committee man stared with all his might into the immovable face of the lecturer. ‘ Isn’t there a clerk here, or registrar, or coroner, or something like that, of whom you could find out whether a man for this day had died ? ’ ‘ Why, yes, I suppose so,’ slowly replied the committee man. * Would you be so good then to find out, and before I commenced the lecture, if pos sible, whether that man is dead ? If he is dead than I am all right, for 1 am to leave the city early to-morrow morning; but if he isn’t dead, I cannot help but feel uneasy about myself, and I am not well to-night.’ The kind-hearted committee man immediately hurried away to get the information. When in his room at Ifis hotel that night a servant told him a gentleman wished him to step down stairs in the hall as he wanted to see him. Mr Harte went down, and there met the committee man. ‘ I am sorry Mr Harte, to disturb you,’ he said ; ‘ but I could not get that information earlier. It is all right. That death rate 1 spoke of was merely the average.’