Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Henry Walcott Boynton, Reader's History of American Literature

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[245] Much of the welcome was given most readily to what may be called the Buffalo Bill spirit, and belonged to the tomahawk and blanket period. When a Swedish visitor to this country, some twenty years ago, was asked whether Frederika Bremer's novels, once received here with such enthusiasm, were still read in Sweden, he said “No;” and to the question as to what had taken their place he replied, “Bret Harte and Mark Twain.” It is undoubtedly these two men rather than any others among the Western humorists, in their opinion of whom Europe and America, for a time at least, most nearly united.

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Bret Harte.

Apart from his characterization of such broadly humorous types as “Truthful James” and “Ah sin,” Bret Harte deserves to be remembered as the picturesque chronicler of life in California during the early gold-hunting days. His later work leads one to think that it was a lucky stroke of fortune which led the young native of New York with the quick eye and the clever pen, at precisely the right moment, into an uncultivated field. It was his lot, as was said by some critic, to remain for thirty years what is called a promising writer. He created,