Re-reading Bret Harte's "How Santa Claus Came to Simpson's Bar" (1872), I was interested to find this passage referencing the narrator of MT's jumping frog tale (1867): It was a figure familiar enough to the company, and known in Simpson's Bar as the "Old Man." A man of perhaps fifty years; grizzled and scant of hair, but still fresh and youthful of complexion. A face full of ready, but not very powerful, sympathy, with a chameleon-like aptitude for taking on the shade and color of contiguous moods and feelings. He had evidently just left some hilarious companions and did not at first notice the gravity of the group, but clapped the shoulder of the nearest man jocularly, and threw himself into a vacant chair. "Jest heard the best thing out, boys! Ye know Smiley, over yar -- Jim Smiley -- funniest man in the Bar? Well, Jim was jest telling the richest yarn about -- " "Smiley's a ---- fool," interrupted a gloomy voice. "A particular ---- skunk," added another in sepulchral accents. A silence followed these positive statements. The Old Man glanced quickly around the group. Then his face slowly changed. "That's so," he said reflectively, after a pause, "certingly a sort of a skunk and suthin' of a fool. In course." He was silent for a moment as in painful contemplation of the unsavoriness and folly of the unpopular Smiley. I wonder if this might have annoyed Twain. Later in the 70s, his relationship with Harte deteriorated. Could this have been an early harbinger? Harte had spent time in Angel's Camp and presumably met Smiley, or at least knew of him, but it was Twain who'd made him a popular figure. The two writers were keenly aware of their respective sales; each paid close attention to the other. Might MT have viewed Harte as trying to ride his coat-tails?