MEN OF THE DAY.

Temuka Leader, Volume 2, Issue 141, 30 April 1879, Page 3

MEN OF THE DAY.

The following is what " Vanity Fair" says about Mr Francis Bret ITarte, with an excellent full-length colored portrait:— One and forty years ago there was born to a poor schoolmaster in New York a son. The schoolmaster died while his son w T as yet a boy, and left him no inheritance beyond a splendid set of brains, provided with which young Bret Harte, at the earliest possible age, set about doing something. He first obtained employment in a store in New York. At seventeen he gave up this calling for a more adventurous life went to San Francisco, and thence to the mines of -Sonora, in a province bordering on Mexico, at that time in a very unsettled state. Here he tried schoolmastering, with indifferent success. He then became a compositor and writer in the office of a local newspaper. He attempted himself to found a newspaper. He essayed mining and every occupation that, the time and the country could offer. At this time, among all other things winch had suggested themselves to him, ho had no : idea of that calling which is called literary ; he h;.d indeed been taught ; somewhat to despise the literary career, and would himself have preferred to be i by profession a lawyer, or a rich man. j But it so chanced that, drawing upon his own experience, he threw off a short tale called u The Luck of Roaring i Camp." He was now twenty-seven, ! and had somehow come to be editor of a magazine. This talc mecle the fortune of the magazine and began the reputation of Bret Harte, which was carried to its height when, in the following year, he published the short poem of "The Heathen Chinee." Those who could judge,, and even those who could not judge, saw at once that a distinctly new man, with a clearly new vein of humour and a new field of observation, had appeared in print ; and from that day to this he has reaped the full advantage of an unvarying career of success. No living writer can so seize upon the strong points of a strong tale, and tell it so simply and forcibly. " Tennessee's Partner," which he himself considers to be his best, and " Santa Glaus," which is even more powerful and touching, have shown that his is a master hand ; and it is a pity that he ever should have written those parodies of the novelists which might have been produced by any literary hack. Bret Harte has been fortunate in his career. No article of his ever was rejected ; lie has always been well paid ; and he so enjoys his own works that the reading of proofs is still to him one of his greatest pleasures. He is now the United States Consul at Crefeld.