The instant and enormous vogue of Pike literature came almost by accident. Bret Harte late in the sixties had dashed off in a happy moment a humorous account of an attempt made by two California gamblers to fleece an innocent Chinaman who turned out to be anything but innocent. He had entitled the poem "Plain Language from Truthful James" and had thrown it aside as a trifle. Some months later during the last exciting moments before going to press with an edition of the _Overland Monthly_ it was discovered that the form was one page short. There was nothing ready but this poem, and with misgivings Harte inserted it. The result was nothing less than amazing. It proved to be the most notable page in the history of the magazine. The poem captured the East completely; it was copied and quoted and laughed at in every corner of the country. It swept through England and beyond. _The Luck of Roaring Camp_ and the two or three strong pieces that followed it had given Harte a certain vogue in the East, but now he swiftly became not only a national, but an international figure. The fame of the "Heathen Chinee," as the poem was now called, brought out of obscurity other poems written by Harte during his editorial days, among them "The Society upon the Stanislaus," and it gave wings to other verses that he now wrote in the "Heathen Chinee" meter and stanza--"Dow's Flat" and "Penelope." Quickly there were added "Jim," "Chiquita," "In the Tunnel," and "Cicely," all of them dealing not with the "heathen Chinee" of his first great strike, but with that other picturesque figure of early California, the Pike. It was _gold_,--in the quartz, And it ran all alike; And I reckon five oughts Was the worth of that strike; And that house with the coopilow's his'n,--which the same isn't bad for a Pike. These poems with others were published in 1871 with the title _East and West Poems_. The Pike County pieces in the volume number altogether seven; John Hay's _Pike County Ballads_, which came out in book form at almost the same moment, numbered six--thirteen rather remarkable poems when one considers the furore that they created and the vast influence they exerted upon their times. For a decade and more Pike County colored American literature. In 1871 J. G. Holland summed up the situation: The "Pike" ... has produced a strange and startling sensation in recent literature.... With great celerity he has darted through the columns of our newspapers, the pages of our magazines, while quiet, well-behaved contributors have stood one side and let him have his own wild way. And it began to seem, at one time, as if the ordinary, decent virtues of civilized society could stand no chance in comparison with the picturesque heroism of this savage in dialect.[51]