He became
in turn a drug-clerk, teacher, type-setter, editor, and even
Secretary of the California Mint--his nearest approach,
apparently, to the actual work of the mines. In 1868, while
editor of "The Overland Monthly," he wrote the short story which
was destined to make him famous in the East and to release him
from California forever. It was "The Luck of Roaring Camp." He
had been writing romantic sketches in prose and verse for years;
he had steeped himself in Dickens, like everybody else in the
eighteen-sixties; and now he saw his pay-gravel shining back into
his own shining eyes. It was a pocket, perhaps, rather than a
lead, but Bret Harte worked to the end of his career this
material furnished by the camps, this method of the short story.
He never returned to California after his joyous exit in 1871.
For a few years he tried living in New York, but from 1878 until
his death in 1902 Bret Harte lived in Europe, still turning out
California stories for an English and American public which
insisted upon that particular pattern.
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