For full ten minutes I sat there, feeling sick and more fit to die than anything else. I was perfectly incapable of looking at the notice above. But, at last, I plucked up courage to meet my fate, very much as one summons up courage to have a tooth out and get the horrid wrench over. Judge of my surprise and joy when, on reading the notice, I found that the _Saturday_ had given me a rattling good notice, praising the new author heartily and without stint. I shall never, as long as I live, forget the effect of that, my first review, upon me. For quite half an hour I sat without moving, only feeling, 'I shall never be able to keep it up. I shall never be able to follow it up by another.' I felt paralysed, faint, crushed, anything but elated and jubilant. And, at last, through some instinct, I put my hand up to my head to find that it was cold and wet, as if it had been dipped in the river. Thank Heaven, from that day to this I have never known what a cold sweat was. It was my first experience of such a thing, and sincerely I hope it will be my last. [Illustration: I TOOK UP THE 'SATURDAY REVIEW'] [Illustration: Drawing signed A. S. Boyd, 18th Mar. 1892 with signature below: Bret Harte _A Sketch from Life_] '_CALIFORNIAN VERSE_' BY BRET HARTE When I say that my 'first book' was _not_ my own, and contained beyond the title-page not one word of my own composition, I trust that I shall not be accused of trifling with paradox, or tardily unbosoming myself of youthful plagiary. But the fact remains that in priority of publication the first book for which I became responsible, and which probably provoked more criticism than anything I have written since, was a small compilation of Californian poems indited by other hands.