Harte worked in a number of different professional capacities including miner, teacher, messenger and journalist before turning to full time writing in 1871.
Bret Harte moved to California in 1853 and spent part of his life in a mining camp near Humboldt Bay (the current town of Arcata), a setting which provided material for some of his works. California had just become a state in 1850. This story mentions places familiar to me, born and raised in California; Sacramento and Santa Cruz… at a time when the state was still home to it’s natives, the Mexicans.
Enjoy!