understand why the very name "California" still stirs the blood and excites the imagination throughout the civilized world. If this brief narrative should induce anyone to "gird up his loins," shoulder his pack and essay a similar pilgrimage, the author will feel that he has not been unrewarded. And if a man over threescore years of age can tramp through seven counties and return, in spite of intense heat, feeling better and stronger than when he started, a young fellow in the hey-day of life and sound of wind and limb surely ought not to be discouraged. Thomas Dykes Beasley. A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country Chapter I Reminiscences of Bret Harte. "Plain Language From Truthfulful James." The Glamour of the Old Mining Towns It is forty-four years since the writer met the author of "The Luck of Roaring Camp" - that wonderful blending within the limits of a short story of humor, pathos and tragedy - which, incredible as it may seem, met with but a cold reception from the local press, and was even branded as "indecent" and "immodest!" On the occasion referred to, I was strolling on Rincon Hill - at that time the fashionable residence quarter of San Francisco - in company with Mr. J. H. Wildes, whose cousin, the late Admiral Frank Wildes, achieved fame in the battle of Manila Bay. Mr. Wildes called my attention to an approaching figure and said: "Here comes Bret Harte, a man of unusual literary ability. He is having a hard struggle now, but only needs the opportunity, to make a name for himself." That opportunity arrived almost immediately. In the September number of the Overland Monthly, 1870, of which magazine Mr. Harte was then editor, appeared "Plain Language from Truthful James," or "The Heathen Chinee," as the poem was afterwards called. A few weeks later, to my amazement, while turning the pages of Punch in the Mercantile Library, I came across "The Heathen Chinee;" an unique compliment so far as my recollection of Punch serves. To this generous and instantaneous recognition of genius may be attributed in no small measure the rapid distinction won by Bret Harte in the world of letters.