LITERARY LANDMARKS ON THE PACIFIC COAST 

 of mining life were written. It was after some years 

 of knocking about northern California, especially 

 about Eureka, that Bret Harte drifted back to San 

 Francisco, and as compositor, then contributor, for 

 the Golden Era brought out M'liss and some of the 

 Condensed Novels. During this time Mark Twain 

 came to the city from Nevada, and while reporter 

 for the Call contributed to the Era and met Bret 

 Harte. The two men became interested in starting 

 the Weekly California*, which appeared in 1864 

 and held the center of the stage for over three years. 

 When the Overland Monthly was founded, in 1868, 

 Bret Harte was the editor, and it was in an early 

 number of this magazine that he shocked California, 

 and delighted Boston, by bringing out The Luck of 

 Roaring Camp. 



It is impossible, of course, in the newly built 

 city of San Francisco, to find physical traces of this 

 pioneer literary life, but the city has its magazines 

 still, whose names recall this interesting past. The 

 Argonaut carries one back to the vigorous traditions 

 of Pixley and Harte; and with the Wave we connect 

 the brilliant work of Ambrose Bierce and the stories 

 with which Frank Norris began his literary career. 

 And even if the Lark's career was a brief thing of 

 months, has not the Purple Cow made that joyous 

 little sheet the sharer of its own immortality? 



Then there is Stevenson. That is truly a loss, 

 that we cannot now visit the haunts of his brief visit 

 in the city. But instead, San Francisco expresses its 

 affectionate loyalty in the annual commemorative 

 dinners of the Stevenson Fellowship, and keeps 

 fresh whatever memory it has of the crude, quaint 

 city Stevenson knew. Very different from the Bush 

 Street of today was the little street in which he 

 lodged at number 608, with a quiet, cheap restau- 

 rant conveniently by. And if we go south of Market 

 street in search of the Rincon Hill that he used to 

 explore the Rincon Hill of aristocratic traditions, 

 the scene that Gertrude Atherton used later, from 

 her own girlhood memory, as the setting for The 

 Californians we find today not even a hill, only a 

 dreary district of warehouses. Stevenson's descrip- 

 tion of it is in The Wrecker; that "place of pre- 

 carious, sandy cliffs, deep, sandy cuttings, solitary 

 ancient houses, and the butt-ends of streets." There 

 it was that he used to search out Charles Warren 

 Stpddard's little house for friendly chat, and where 

 first he was roused to longing for the South Seas. 



But Portsmouth Square, another haunt of Steven- 

 son's, we have still and will always have; and with 

 it the first monument ever erected to him, and per- 



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