k receiving twelve dollars for an article. Here
forgathered that group of brilliant writers of the Pacific Slope,
numbering Bret Harte, Mark Twain, Charles Warren Stoddard, Charles Henry
Webb, and Prentice Mulford among its celebrities; two of that remarkable
coterie were soon destined to achieve world-wide fame. "These ingenuous
young men, with the fatuity of gifted people," says Mr. Howells, "had
established a literary newspaper in San Francisco, and they brilliantly
co-operated in its early extinction." Of his first meeting with Mark
Twain, Bret Harte has left a memorable picture:

"His head was striking. He had the curly hair, the aquiline nose,
and even the aquiline eye--an eye so eagle-like that a second lid
would not have surprised me--of an unusual and dominant nature.
His eyebrows were very thick and bushy. His dress was careless,
and his general manner was one of supreme indifference to
surroundings and circumstances. Barnes introduced him as Mr. Sam
Clemens, and remarked that he had shown a very unusual talent in a
number of newspaper articles contributed over the signature of
'Mark Twain.'"

Mark tired of the life of literary drudgery in San Francisco--on one
occasion he was reduced to a solitary ten--cent piece; and General John
McComb wooed him back to journalism just as he was on the point of
returning to his old work on the Mississippi River, this time as a
Government pilot. During the earlier years in San Francisco, he was in
the habit of writing weekly letters to the 'Territorial Enterprise'
--personals, market-chat, and the like. But when he criticized the police
department of San Francisco in the most scathing terms, the officials
"found means for bringing charges that made the author's presence there
difficult and comfortless." So he welcomed the opportunity to join
Steve Gillis in a pilgrimage to the mountain home of Jim Gillis, his
brother--a "sort of Bohemian infirmary." Mark Twain revelled in the
delightful company of the original of Bret Harte's "Truthful James," and
he enjoyed the mining methods of Jackass Hill, like the true Bohemian
that he was. Soon after his arrival, Mark and Jim Gillis started out in
search of golden pockets. As De Quille says:

"They soon found and spent some days in working up the undisturbed
trail of an undiscovered deposit, They were on the 'golden
bee-line' and stuck to it faithfully, though it