Belated Guest (from Literary Friends and Acquaintance) , livre ebook

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pubOne.info present you this new edition. It is doubtful whether the survivor of any order of things finds compensation in the privilege, however undisputed by his contemporaries, of recording his memories of it. This is, in the first two or three instances, a pleasure. It is sweet to sit down, in the shade or by the fire, and recall names, looks, and tones from the past; and if the Absences thus entreated to become Presences are those of famous people, they lend to the fond historian a little of their lustre, in which he basks for the time with an agreeable sense of celebrity. But another time comes, and comes very soon, when the pensive pleasure changes to the pain of duty, and the precious privilege converts itself into a grievous obligation. You are unable to choose your company among those immortal shades; if one, why not another, where all seem to have a right to such gleams of this 'dolce lome' as your reminiscences can shed upon them? Then they gather so rapidly, as the years pass, in these pale realms, that one, if one continues to survive, is in danger of wearing out such welcome, great or small, as met ones recollections in the first two or three instances, if one does one's duty by each

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Publié par	Pub One Info
Date de parution	06 novembre 2010
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9782819948131
Langue	English

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A BELATED GUEST
It is doubtful whether the survivor of any order ofthings finds compensation in the privilege, however undisputed byhis contemporaries, of recording his memories of it. This is, inthe first two or three instances, a pleasure. It is sweet to sitdown, in the shade or by the fire, and recall names, looks, andtones from the past; and if the Absences thus entreated to becomePresences are those of famous people, they lend to the fondhistorian a little of their lustre, in which he basks for the timewith an agreeable sense of celebrity. But another time comes, andcomes very soon, when the pensive pleasure changes to the pain ofduty, and the precious privilege converts itself into a grievousobligation. You are unable to choose your company among thoseimmortal shades; if one, why not another, where all seem to have aright to such gleams of this 'dolce lome' as your reminiscences canshed upon them? Then they gather so rapidly, as the years pass, inthese pale realms, that one, if one continues to survive, is indanger of wearing out such welcome, great or small, as met onesrecollections in the first two or three instances, if one doesone's duty by each. People begin to say, and not without reason, ina world so hurried and wearied as this: “Ah, here he is again withhis recollections! ” Well, but if the recollections by some magicalgood-fortune chance to concern such a contemporary of his as, say,Bret Harte, shall not he be partially justified, or at leastexcused?
I.
My recollections of Bret Harte begin with thearrest, on the Atlantic shore, of that progress of his from thePacific Slope, which, in the simple days of 1871, was like theprogress of a prince, in the universal attention and interest whichmet and followed it. He was indeed a prince, a fairy prince in whomevery lover of his novel and enchanting art felt a patrioticproperty, for his promise and performance in those earliest talesof 'The Luck of Roaring Camp', and 'Tennessee's Partner', and'Maggles', and 'The Outcasts of Poker Flat', were the earnests ofan American literature to come. If it is still to come, in greatmeasure, that is not Harte's fault, for he kept on writing thosestories, in one form or another, as long as he lived. He wrote themfirst and last in the spirit of Dickens, which no man of his timecould quite help doing, but he wrote them from the life of BretHarte, on the soil and in the air of the newest kind of new world,and their freshness took the soul of his fellow-countrymen not onlywith joy, but with pride such as the Europeans, who adored him muchlonger, could never know in him.
When the adventurous young editor who had proposedbeing his host for Cambridge and the Boston neighborhood, whileHarte was still in San Francisco, and had not yet begun hisprincely progress eastward, read of the honors that attended hiscoming from point to point, his courage fell, as if he had perhaps,committed himself in too great an enterprise. Who was he, indeed,that he should think of making this
“Dear son of memory, great heir of fame, ”
his guest, especially when he heard that in ChicagoHarte failed of attending a banquet of honor because the givers ofit had not sent a carriage to fetch him to it, as the alleged usewas in San Francisco? Whether true or not, and it was probably nottrue in just that form, it must have been this rumor whichdetermined his host to drive into Boston for him with thehandsomest hack which the livery of Cambridge afforded, and nottrust to the horse-car and the local expressman to get him and hisbaggage out, as he would have done with a less portentous guest.