No one else has rescued them
from the oblivion which usually overtakes all transitory stages of human
development.
Bret Harte's pages afford us the rare privilege of again communing with
genuine primitive feeling, with eternal human qualities, not deflected or
warped by convention. He gives us the literature of democracy. In
self-forgetfulness, sympathy, love for his kind, Tennessee's partner in his
unkempt dress is the peer of any wearer of the broadcloth.
Bret Harte's best work is as bracing, as tonic, as instinct with the spirit
of vigorous youth, as the mountain air which has never before been
breathed. Woodberry well says: "He created lasting pictures of human life,
some of which have the eternal outline and pose of a Theocritean idyl. The
supreme nature of his gift is shown by the fact that he had no rival and
left no successor. His work is as unique as that of Poe or Hawthorne."
[Footnote: Woodberry: _America in Literature_.]
EUGENE FIELD, 1850-1895
THE POET LAUREATE OF CHILDREN.--Eugene Field was born in St. Louis in 1850.
Of this western group of authors he was the only member who went to
college. He completed the junior year at the University of Missouri, but
did not graduate.
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