A Belated Guest (from Literary Friends and Acquaintance)
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William Dean Howells
William Dean Howells (1837-1920) was a prolific writer of essays, fiction, nonfiction, poetry, memoirs, plays, and travel books, Howells was the gold standard of American letters from the Civil War until World War I. For many years he was the influential editor of The Atlantic Monthly, and from that chair befriended the likes of Mark Twain, Henry James, Bret Harte, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, all of whom, if asked, would have listed Howells as among the most influential writers of the age. He is credited with having developed a school of literature around the themes of realism. At his death he was known as the 'Lincoln of literature'.
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A Belated Guest (from Literary Friends and Acquaintance) - William Dean Howells
The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Belated Guest, by William Dean Howells
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
Title: A Belated Guest From Literary Friends And Acquaintances
Author: William Dean Howells
Release Date: October 22, 2004 [EBook #3391]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A BELATED GUEST ***
Produced by David Widger
LITERARY FRIENDS AND ACQUAINTANCES—A Belated Guest
by William Dean Howells
A BELATED GUEST
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. People begin to say, and not without reason, in a world so hurried and wearied as this: Ah, here he is again with his recollections!
Well, but if the recollections by some magical good-fortune chance to concern such a contemporary of his as, say, Bret Harte, shall not he be partially justified, or at least excused?
I.
My recollections of Bret Harte begin with the arrest, on the Atlantic shore, of that progress of his from the Pacific Slope, which, in the simple days of 1871, was like the progress of a prince, in the universal attention and interest which met