they should send the child to Red Dog - (an allusion to his vocal powers) and even by Kentuck's endearing diminutive of 'the d-d little cuss.' But these were felt to be vague and unsatisfactory, and were 5 at last dismissed under another influence. Gamblers and adventurers are generally superstitious, and Oakhurst one day declared that the baby had brought the luck' to Roaring Camp. It was certain 10 that of late they had been successful. Luck' was the name agreed upon, with the prefix of Tommy for greater convenience. No allusion was made to the mother, and the father was unknown. It's better,' said the philosophical Oakhurst, to take a fresh deal all round. Call him Luck, and start him fair.' A day was accordingly set apart for the christening. What was meant by this ceremony the reader may imagine, who has already gathered some idea of the reckless irreverence of Roaring Camp. The master of ceremonies was one 'Boston,' a noted wag, and the occasion seemed to promise the greatest facetiousness. This ingenious satirist had spent two days in preparing a burlesque of the church service, with pointed local allusions. The choir was properly trained, and Sandy Tipton was to stand godfather. But after the procession had marched to the grove with music and banners, and the child had been deposited before a mock altar, Stumpy stepped before the expectant crowd. It ain't my style to spoil fun, boys,' said the little man, stoutly, eyeing the faces around him, but it strikes me that this thing ain't exactly on the squar. It's playing it pretty low down on this yer baby to ring in fun on him that he ain't goin' to understand. And ef there's going to be any godfathers round, I'd like to see who's got any better rights than me.' A silence followed Stumpy's speech. The introduction of a female nurse in the camp also met with objection. It was argued that no decent woman could be 15 prevailed to accept Roaring Camp as her home, and the speaker urged that they did n't want any more of the other kind.' This unkind allusion to the defunct mother, harsh as it may seem, was the first spasm of propriety - the first symptom of the camp's regeneration. Stumpy advanced nothing. Perhaps he felt a certain delicacy in interfering with the selection of a possible successor in office. But when questioned, he averred stoutly that he and Jinny - the mammal before alluded to could manage to rear the child. There was something original, independent, and heroic about the plan that 30 pleased the camp. Stumpy was retained. Certain articles were sent for to Sacramento. Mind,' said the treasurer, as he pressed a bag of gold-dust into the express-man's hand, the best that can be got -lace, you know, and filigree-work and frills,-d-n the cost!' Strange to say, the child thrived. Perhaps the invigorating climate of the mountain camp was compensation for material 40 deficiencies. Nature took the foundling to her broader breast. In that rare atmosphere of the Sierra foothills — that air pungent with balsamic odor, that ethereal cordial, at once bracing and exhilarating, 45 To the credit of all humorists be it said he may have found food and nourishment, or a subtle chemistry that transmuted asses' milk to lime and phosphorus. Stumpy inclined to the belief that it was the latter and good nursing. Me and 50 that ass,' he would say, has been father and mother to him! Don't you,' he would add, apostrophizing the helpless bundle before him, never go back on us.' that the first man to acknowledge its justice was the satirist, thus stopped of his fun. But,' said Stumpy, quickly, following up his advantage, we're here for a christening, and we'll have it. I proclaim you Thomas Luck, according to the laws of the United States and the State of California, so help me God.' It was the first time that the name of the Deity had By the time he was a month old, the 55 been uttered otherwise but profanely in necessity of giving him a name became apparent. He had generally been known as the Kid,' Stumpy's boy,'' the Cayote' the camp. The form of christening was perhaps even more ludicrous than the satirist had conceived; but strangely enough, tranquilizing quality, and one song, sung by Man-O-War Jack,' an English sailor from Her Majesty's Australian colonies, was quite popular as a lullaby. It was 5 a lugubrious recital of the exploits of 'the Arethusa, Seventy-four,' in a muffled minor, ending with a prolonged dying fall at the burden of each verse, 'On b-0-0-0ard of the Arethusa.' It was a fine sight to see Jack holding The Luck, rocking from side to side as if with the motion of a ship, and crooning forth this naval ditty. Either through the peculiar rocking of Jack or the length of his song-it contained ninety stanzas, and was continued with conscientious deliberation to the bitter end the lullaby generally had the desired effect. At such times the men would lie at full length under the trees, in the soft summer twilight, smoking their pipes and drinking in the melodious utterances. An indistinct idea that this was pastoral happiness pervaded the camp. This 'ere kind o' think,' said the Cockney Simmons, meditatively reclining on his elbow, is 'evingly.' It reminded him of Greenwich. And so the work of regeneration began in Roaring Camp. Almost imperceptibly a change came over the settlement. The cabin assigned to Tommy Luck' or 'The Luck,' as he was more frequently 10 called first showed signs of improvement. It was kept scrupulously clean and whitewashed. Then it was boarded, clothed and papered. The rosewood cradle packed eighty miles by mule - had, 15 in Stumpy's way of putting it, sorter killed the rest of the furniture.' So the rehabilitation of the cabin became a necessity. The men who were in the habit of lounging in at Stumpy's to see how 20 The Luck got on' seemed to appreciate the change, and, in self-defense, the rival establishment of Tuttle's grocery' bestirred itself, and imported a carpet and mirrors. The reflections of the latter on 25 the appearance of Roaring Camp tended to produce stricter habits of personal cleanliness. Again Stumpy imposed a kind of quarantine upon those who aspired to the honor and privilege of hold- 30 ing The Luck.' It was a cruel mortification to Kentuck—who, in the carelessness of a large nature and the habits of frontier life, had begun to regard all garments as a second cuticle, which, like a 35 snake's, only sloughed off through decay -to be debarred this privilege from certain prudential reasons. Yet such was the subtle influence of innovation that he thereafter appeared regularly every after-40 noon in a clean shirt, and face still shining from his ablutions. Nor were moral and social sanitary laws neglected. Tommy,' who was supposed to spend his whole existence in a persistent attempt to repose, 45 must not be disturbed by noise. The shouting and yelling which had gained the camp its felicitous title were not permitted within hearing distance of Stumpy's. The men conversed in whis-50 pers, or smoked with Indian gravity. Profanity was tacitly given up in these sacred precincts, and throughout the camp a popular form of expletive, known as 'D-n the luck!' and Curse the luck! '55 was abandoned, as having a new personal bearing. Vocal music was not interdicted, being supposed to have a soothing, 6 On the long summer days The Luck was usually carried to the gulch, from whence the golden store of Roaring Camp was taken. There, on a blanket spread over pine boughs, he would lie while the men were working in the ditches below. Latterly, there was a rude attempt to decorate this bower with flowers and sweet-smelling shrubs, and generally some one would bring him a cluster of wild honeysuckles, azaleas, or the painted blossoms of Las Mariposas. The men had suddenly awakened to the fact that there were beauty and significance in these trifles, which they had so long trodden carelessly beneath their feet. A flake of glittering mica, a fragment of variegated quartz, a bright pebble from the bed of the creek, became beautiful to eyes thus cleared and strengthened, and were invariably put aside for The Luck.' It was wonderful how many treasures the woods and hillsides yielded that would do for Tommy.' Surrounded by. playthings such as never child out of fairyland had before, it is to be hoped that Tommy was content. He appeared to be serenely happy, albeit there was an infantine gravity about him, a contempla-. tive light in his round gray eyes, that sometimes worried Stumpy. He was al ways tractable and quiet, and it is re- With the prosperity of the camp_came a desire for further improvement. It was proposed to build a hotel in the following spring, and to invite one or two decent 5 families to reside there for the sake of The Luck,' who might perhaps profit by female companionship. The sacrifice that this concession to the sex cost these men, who were fiercely skeptical in regard to its general virtue and usefulness, can only be accounted for by their affection for Tommy. A few still held out. But the resolve could not be carried into effect for three months, and the minority meekly yielded in the hope that something might turn up to prevent it. And it did. The winter of '51 will long be remembered in the foothills. The snow lay deep on the Sierras, and every mountain creek became a river, and every river a lake. Each gorge and gulch was transformed into a tumultuous water-course that descended the hill-sides, tearing down giant trees and scattering its drift and débris along the plain. Red Dog had been twice under water, and Roaring Camp had been forewarned. Water put the gold into them gulches,' said Stumpy; 'it's been here once and will be here again! And that night the North Fork suddenly leaped over its banks, and swept up the triangular valley of Roaring Camp. In the confusion of rushing water, crashing trees, and crackling timber, and the darkness which seemed to flow with the water and blot out the fair valley, but little could be done to collect the scattered camp. When the morning broke, the cabin of Stumpy nearest the river-bank was gone. Higher up the gulch they found the body of its unlucky owner; but the pride the hope the joy-the Luck of Roaring Camp had disappeared. They were returning with sad hearts, when a shout from the bank recalled them. --- Such was the golden summer of Roaring Camp. They were flush timesand the Luck was with them. The claims had yielded enormously. The camp was jealous of its privileges and looked sus- 40 piciously on strangers. No encouragement was given to immigration, and, to make their seclusion more perfect, the land on either side of the mountain wall that surrounded the camp they duly pre- 45 empted. This, and a reputation for singular proficiency with the revolver, kept the reserve of Roaring Camp inviolate. The expressman - their only connecting link with the surrounding world-some- 50 about two miles below. Did anybody times told wonderful stories of the camp. It was a relief boat from down the river. They had picked up, they said, a man and an infant, nearly exhausted, know them, and did they belong here? It needed but a glance to show them Kentuck lying there, cruelly crushed and bruised, but still holding The Luck of Roaring Camp in his arms. As they bent over the strangely assorted pair, they saw that the child was cold and pulseless. 'He is dead,' said one. Kentuck opened his eyes. Dead?' he repeated feebly. Yes, my man, and you are dying too.' A smile lit the eyes of the expiring Kentuck. Dying,' he repeated, he's a taking me with him tell the boys I've got the Luck with me, now; and the strong man clinging to the frail babe as a drowning man is said to cling to a straw, drifted away into the shadowy river that flows forever to the unknown sea. The Overland Monthly, August, 1868. 45 Of flags festooned over the wall; Of the candles that shed their soft luster And tallow on head-dress and shawl; Of the steps that we took to one fiddle; Of the dress of my queer vis-a-vis; And how I once went down the middle With the man that shot Sandy McGee; Of the moon that was quietly sleeping On the hill, when the time came to go; Of the few baby peaks that were peeping From under their bed clothes of snow; Of that ride, that to me was the rarest: Of the something you said at the gate. Ah, Joe, then I was n't an heiress To the best-paying lead in the State.' 50 55 CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER (1829-1900) The career of Charles Dudley Warner was preeminently that of a journalist. Born in Massachusetts, educated at Hamilton College, New York, and at the University of Pennsylvania law school, he practiced his profession for four years in Chicago, then removed to Hartford, Connecticut, as a member of the editorial staff of the Hartford Courant, with which paper he was connected in one way or another the rest of his life. Literary fame came to him almost by accident. He was forty when he contributed a rambling series of papers to the Courant and later collected them as My Summer in a Garden, 1870. The immediate success of the publication led him to write for the Atlantic Monthly, Backlog Studies, sketches of the Donald G. Mitchell variety, and from that time his books became many. It is realized now that his own generation overestimated Warner. yet it cannot be denied that his influence in directing at a critical time the current of American literature was considerable. He was peculiarly a transition figure: the last of the old-time Sketch Book essayists, and yet enough in sympathy with the new period to collaborate with Mark Twain on such a book as The Gilded Age. His own day regarded him as a humorist, but the readers of the present generation are apt to find him, except at rare intervals, rather dry reading. WASHINGTON IRVING1 5 tion that indicates want of mental grip in that direction. But in the region of feeling his genius is sufficient to his purpose; either when that purpose is a highly creative one, as in the character and achievements of his Dutch heroes, or merely that of portraiture, as in the 'Columbus' and the Washington.' The analysis of a nature so simple and a char10 acter so transparent as Irving's, who lived in the sunlight and had no envelope of mystery, has not the fascination that attaches to Hawthorne. 15 I do not know any other author whose writings so perfectly reproduce his character, or whose character may be more certainly measured by his writings. His character is perfectly transparent: his predominant traits were humor and sentiment; his temperament was gay with a dash of melancholy; his inner life and his mental operations were the reverse of complex, and his literary method is simple. He felt his subject, and he expressed his conception not so much by direct statement or description as by almost imperceptible touches and shadings here and there, by a diffused tone and color, with very little show of analysis. Perhaps it is a sufficient definition to say that his method was sympathetic. In the 20 end the reader is put in possession of the luminous and complete idea upon which the author has been brooding, though he may not be able to say exactly how the impression has been conveyed to him; 25 and I doubt if the author could have explained his sympathetic process. He certainly would have lacked precision in any philosophical or metaphysical theme, and when, in his letters, he touches upon poli- 30 tics there is a little vagueness of defini 1 Copyright by Houghton Mifflin & Co. Although the direction of his work as a man of letters was largely determined by his early surroundings,- that is, by his birth in a land void of traditions, and into a society without much literary life, so that his intellectual food was of necessity a foreign literature that was at the moment becoming a little antiquated in the land of its birth, and his warm imagination was forced to revert to the past for that nourishment which his crude environment did not offer, yet he was by nature a retrospective man. His face was set towards the past, not towards the future. He never caught the restlessness of this century, nor the prophetic light that shone in the faces of Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats; if he apprehended the stir of the new spirit he still, by mental af filiation, belonged rather to the age of |