ARTEMUS WARD
San Francisco life. There were real literary people there—among them a young man, with rooms upstairs in the Call office, Francis Bret Harte, editor of the Californian, a new literary weekly which Charles Henry Webb had recently founded. Bret Harte was not yet famous, but his gifts were recognized on the Pacific slope, especially by the Era group of writers, the Golden Era being a literary monthly of considerable distinction. Joaquin Miller recalls, from his diary of that period, having seen Prentice Mulford, Bret Harte, Charles Warren Stoddard, Mark Twain, Artemus Ward, and others, all assembled there at one time—a remarkable group, certainly, to be dropped down behind the Sierras so long ago. They were a hopeful, happy lot, and sometimes received five dollars for an article, which, of course, seemed a good deal more precious than a much larger sum earned in another way.
Mark Twain had contributed to the Era while still in Virginia City, and now, with Bret Harte, was ranked as a leader of the group. The two were much together, and when Harte became editor of the Californian he engaged Clemens as a regular contributor at the very fancy rate of twelve dollars an article. Some of the brief chapters included to-day in Sketches New and Old were done at this time. They have humor, but are not equal to his later work, and beyond the Pacific slope they seem to have attracted little attention.
In Roughing It the author tells us how he finally was dismissed from the Call for general incompetency, and presently found himself in the depths of hard
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