Twain’s writing style in “The Californian’s Tale” is primarily journalistic with moments of more lyrical and evocative descriptions. Twain’s previous job as a travel writer comes across in his attention to the landscape of the Northern Californian mining community where the story is set as well as in his journalistic approach to realistically capturing the details of a given scene.
That said, the story features a more poetic style when the first-person narrator experiences deep emotion. Take the following passage, for example, as the narrator steps inside Henry’s impeccably decorated home (after many years of making do with decrepit living conditions):
[H]ere was a nest which had aspects to rest the tired eye and refresh that something in one’s nature which, after long fasting, recognizes, when confronted by the belongings of art, howsoever cheap and modest they may be, that it has unconsciously been famishing and now has found nourishment. I could not have believed that a rag carpet could feast me so, and so content me; or that there could be such solace to the soul in wallpaper and framed lithographs, and bright-colored tidies and lamp-mats.
Twain’s style here becomes more lyrical as he has the narrator describe how this “nest”-like home “refresh[es] that something in one’s nature which […] has unconsciously been famishing and now has found nourishment,” even going as far as metaphorically comparing the simple rag carpet to a delicious item of food that he “feasts” on.
The more poetic language here helps readers understand just how deprived the narrator—and the other remaining miners—are of simple comforts and nourishing homes. While they moved out West to strike gold and become rich, instead they end up so deprived of basic comforts that simple things like rugs, wallpaper, and lamp-mats make them emotional.
