Magee, of the State
University, to whom I am indebted for the authority for some of these
statements, - Chamberlain's journal.
From this simple material the imagination of Bret Harte spun the
characters, incidents, and motives that his genius wove into an
exquisite fabric, an idyl of blind, unreasoning love of man for man. He
was not writing history; and the complaint of those who were part of the
life he depicted, that he misstated the facts, rests on the same failure
to appreciate his purpose and method that leads Eastern and English
critics to consider his realism reality and to mistake his
verisimilitude for the truth itself. The fact is that Bret Harte was a
consummate literary artist, who used facts with all an artist's freedom.
His genius "imbalm'd and treasur'd up on purpose to a life beyond life,"
however, many an actual incident that otherwise would lie buried 'neath
the poppy that the iniquity of oblivion blindly scattereth.
William Dallam Armes.
Tennessee's Partner
I do not think that we ever knew his real name. Our ignorance of it
certainly never gave us any social inconvenience, for at Sandy Bar in
1854 most men were christened anew.
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