COMPLETE POETICAL WORKS

by

Bret Harte


"ARGONAUT EDITION" OF THE WORKS OF BRET HARTE, VOL. 8

P. F. COLLIER & SON

NEW YORK

COPYRIGHT 1882, 1896, AND 1902

By HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & COMPANY



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH


Although Bret Harte's name is identified with Californian life, it
was not till he was fifteen that the author of "Plain Language from
Truthful James" saw the country of his adoption. Francis Bret
Harte, to give the full name which he carried till he became famous,
was born at Albany, New York, August 25, 1839. He went with his
widowed mother to California in 1854, and was thrown as a young man
into the hurly-burly which he more than any other writer has made
real to distant and later people. He was by turns a miner, school-