; a word of
praise from Soule gave him happiness. In a luxurious office up-stairs
was another congenial spirit--a gifted, handsome fellow of twenty-four,
who was secretary of the Mint, and who presently became editor of a new
literary weekly, the Californian, which Charles Henry Webb had founded.
This young man's name was Francis Bret Harte, originally from Albany,
later a miner and school-teacher on the Stanislaus, still later a
compositor, finally a contributor, on the Golden Era. His fame scarcely
reached beyond San Francisco as yet; but among the little coterie of
writing folk that clustered about the Era office his rank was high. Mark
Twain fraternized with Bret Harte and the Era group generally. He felt
that he had reached the land--or at least the borderland--of Bohemia,
that Ultima Thule of every young literary dream.

San Francisco did, in fact, have a very definite literary atmosphere and
a literature of its own. Its coterie of writers had drifted from here
and there, but they had merged themselves into a California body-poetic,
quite as individual as that of Cambridge, even if less famous, less
fortunate in emoluments than the Boston group. Joseph E. Lawrence,
familiarly known as "Joe" Lawrence, was editor of the Golden Era,--[The
Golden Era, California's first literary publication, was founded by
Rollin M. Daggett and J. McDonough Foard in 1852.]--and his kindness and
hospitality were accounted sufficient rewards even when his pecuniary
acknowledgments were modest enough. He had a handsome office, and the
literati, local and visiting, used to gather there. Names that would be
well known later were included in that little band. Joaquin Miller
recalls from an old diary, kept by him then, having seen Adah Isaacs
Menken, Prentice Mulford, Bret Harte, Charles Warren Stoddard, Fitzhugh
Ludlow, Mark Twain, Orpheus C. Kerr, Artemus Ward, Gilbert Densmore, W.
S. Kendall, and Mrs. Hitchcock assembled there at one time. The Era
office would seem to have been a sort of Mount Olympus, or Parnassus,
perhaps; for these were mainly poets, who had scarcely yet attained to
the dignity of gods. Miller was hardly more than a youth then, and this
grand assemblage impressed him, as did the imposing appointments of the
place.

The Era rooms were elegant--[he says]--the most grandly carpeted
and most gorgeously furnished that I have ever seen. Even now in my
memory they seem to have been simply palatial. I have seen th