The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1880-06-26 00:00:00

LECTURE BY MR. BRET HARTE.

On Monday evening Mr. Bret Harte delivered his first
lecture in London, entitled "The Argonauts of '49," at
Steinway Hall, Lower Seymour-street, in aid of the funds of
the Victoria Hospital for Children, Queen's-road, Chelsea.

. _
The hall was crowded to hear this popular American
humourist, who had only just arrived from Germany to
fulfil his charitable task of repeating on behalf of the
institution named a lecture which was given by him not
long ago at Oxford. Mr. Bret Harts is a tall, slender man,
of distinguished appearance, with hair slightly grizzled.
The lecture lasted an hour and ten minutes.

The Argonauts referred to by Mr. Bret Harte were
the discoverers of the gold mutes of the Western
Sierras, and California was their Colchis. He drew
with a master's hand a picture of the digger and
gambler life which his literary sketches have made so
well known, and the lecture was interspersed with
poetical descriptions of the snow-clad hills of the
interior or of the golden city of San Francisco, and
with quaint and laughable anecdotes told in the
quiet, unemotional American tone which prefers sug-
gestion by studious reticence to explicit expression.
The accounts of the early Spanish writers were
briefly dismissed as mendacious, and every river they
thought they had discovered was claimed for a Yankee
barque from Boston. With reference to Sir Francis
Drake who landed on the coast and "scraped the
barnacles from his adventurous keels," the lecturer
passed to the time when on the plains simple
rancheros led peaceful lives, wax tapers burnt in all
the cities, and on the hills the Indians roamed "dressed
neatly, but not expensively, in woad." A galleon was
found ten years ago full of sacramental wax, and was
eagerly explored for the more mundane treasures it
was supposed to contain, but Sir Francis Drake had
been beforehand with the Californians. Salt Lake
City supplied a resting-place for the Argonauts from
the East, and they had so little confidence in the suc-
cess of their mission that one of them said that the
sluice-boxes which they carried to wash the gold
would, in the event of ill-success, make first-class
coffins. They fell on strange fates, and exile revealed
in them unsuspected capacities.

The general- passion for gambling was illustrated
by numerous anecdotes, one being that of a man who
being on the point of returning home in a vessel with
several thousand dollars, lost everything in an hour,
and who, after his wife had come to look for him, was
allowed to win 3,000 dollars from another gentleman
out of pity for her.—" The boys seem to have taken
a fresh deal all round," observed a noted gambler
to Mr. Harte • and the gambler was himself an
illustration. IL came of a family who would not
touch cards because they held such things too trifling
and amusing, but might, perhaps, have been con-
Terted by the remark their descendant made on rising
with 5,000 dollars after ten minutes' play, "To think
there is folks as believes that keards is a waste of
time !" In San Francisco in those early days every-
body played; and when a gambler died at the table,
and three doctors who happened to be there examined
him and pronounced that the cause of death was
disease of the heart, the coroner, who was accidentally
present, empanelled a jury from the other players, who
returned a verdict in accordance with the evidence and
went on with the game. Female society was so scarce
that even a gratuitously ugly face was followed by
admirers. A married captain's wife was escorted home
from a ball by every officer in the garrison, and ob-
served that now at length she understood the meaning
of the expression "the pleasure of your company."
When a baby cried in the theatre everybody shouted
"Encore."

Urban life having been sketched in many startling
phases, the lecturer turned to life at the mountain
side, where the modern golden fleece was searched for,
and where the frying pan, the only cooking utensil,
was carried about like a troubadour's guitar. The
miner lived a wilder life upon the hills. For clothes
his chief reliance was on the meal-sack, that robed his
outer, after it had nourished his inner, man; his track
was marked with empty oyster-cans; he met the native
upon the common footing of beans. He was generous to
a fault. The " sanitary " subscription, by which north
and south benefited alike, was started in a Californian
bar. "It is rough upon those poor fellows; lam sorry
for them." " How much are you sorry?" "Four hun-
dred dollars." The next man gave 1,000 dole. ;in half
an hour donations of 15,000 dole. were telegraphed to
Washington, and the total subscription of California
was 3,000,000 dole, gold. The miners were, above all,
faithful to their partners; and loved them with a love
passing that of women. It was dangerous to inter-
fere in partners' quarrels, and once a stranger at a bar,
who had not, so far as he knew, given offence to any
person present, suddenly found himself upon the floor
and a tall Kentuckian standing over him with his re-
volver out. When the tall gentleman was courteoTly
asked for an explanation, he said, "I ain't nothing
against the stranger myself, but he said something
just now against Quakers, and I want him to under-
stand that my partner is a Quaker and a peaceful
man."

Mr. Bret Harte traced to California such now
world-wide slang as" dry up," "played out," "take
arida
forcible sermon that the preacher seemed to
" passing in your cheques"A miner
o have taken every trick; "on the other hand,
hssataiomitdcek a‘ol'mf:ster, blamed for his intemperate language,
observed, "I don't call that swearing. You should
hear Bill Jones exhort the impenitent mule." A
barman, after a night in which pistol shots had freely
punctuated the village.revelry, appeared in the morn-
ing with his face bound up, but with a very, happy
expression, and observed that the bar was new. and
that it was only on the previous evening "that the
boys seemed to be getting really acquainted.',
The "Heathen Chinee," the mention of whom
elicited a loud cheer for the author of the well-known
poem, was also depicted in striking colours.
The whole lecture, in which quaint and abundant
humour was sometimes artistically tempered and re-
lieved by a touching bit of pathos, was listened to
with deep interest, and it may be hoped that a hand-
some contribution will have been made by means of it
to the hospital funds.