The Luck of Roaring Camp | Page 2

often prosaic processes.
The author's first volume was published in 1865 in a thin book of verse,
containing, besides the titular poem, "The Lost Galleon," various
patriotic contributions to the lyrics of the Civil War, then raging, and
certain better known humorous pieces, which have been hitherto
interspersed with his later poems in separate volumes, but are now
restored to their former companionship. This was followed in 1867 by
"The Condensed Novels," originally contributed to the "San Francisco
Californian," a journal then edited by the author, and a number of local

sketches entitled "Bohemian Papers," making a single not very
plethoric volume, the author's first book of prose. But he deems it
worthy of consideration that during this period, i.e. from 1862 to 1866,
he produced "The Society upon the Stanislaus" and "The Story of
M'liss,"--the first a dialectical poem, the second a Californian
romance,--his first efforts toward indicating a peculiarly characteristic
Western American literature. He would like to offer these facts as
evidence of his very early, half-boyish but very enthusiastic belief in
such a possibility,--a belief which never deserted him, and which, a few
years later, from the better-known pages of "The Overland Monthly,"
he was able to demonstrate to a larger and more cosmopolitan audience
in the story of "The Luck of Roaring Camp" and the poem of the
"Heathen Chinee." But it was one of the anomalies of the very
condition of life that he worked amidst, and endeavored to portray, that
these first efforts were rewarded by very little success; and, as he will
presently show, even "The Luck of Roaring Camp" depended for its
recognition in California upon its success elsewhere. Hence the critical
reader will observe that the bulk of these earlier efforts, as shown in the
first two volumes, were marked by very little flavor of the soil, but
were addressed to an audience half foreign in their sympathies, and still
imbued with Eastern or New England habits and literary traditions.
"Home" was still potent with these voluntary exiles in their moments of
relaxation. Eastern magazines and current Eastern literature formed
their literary recreation, and the sale of the better class of periodicals
was singularly great. Nor was the taste confined to American literature.
The illustrated and satirical English journals were as frequently seen in
California as in Massachusetts; and the author records that he has
experienced more difficulty in procuring a copy of "Punch" in an
English provincial town than was his fortune at "Red Dog" or
"One-Horse Gulch." An audience thus liberally equipped and familiar
with the best modern writers was naturally critical and exacting, and no
one appreciates more than he does the salutary effects of this severe
discipline upon his earlier efforts.
When the first number of "The Overland Monthly" appeared, the author,
then its editor, called the publisher's attention to the lack of any
distinctive Californian romance in its pages, and averred that, should no

other contribution come in, he himself would supply the omission in
the next number. No other contribution was offered, and the author,
having the plot and general idea already in his mind, in a few days sent
the manuscript of "The Luck of Roaring Camp" to the printer. He had
not yet received the proof-sheets when he was suddenly summoned to
the office of the publisher, whom he found standing the picture of
dismay and anxiety with the proof before him. The indignation and
stupefaction of the author can be well understood when he was told that
the printer, instead of returning the proofs to him, submitted them to the
publisher, with the emphatic declaration that the matter thereof was so
indecent, irreligious, and improper that his proof- reader--a young
lady--had with difficulty been induced to continue its perusal, and that
he, as a friend of the publisher and a well-wisher of the magazine, was
impelled to present to him personally this shameless evidence of the
manner in which the editor was imperilling the future of that enterprise.
It should be premised that the critic was a man of character and
standing, the head of a large printing establishment, a church member,
and, the author thinks, a deacon. In which circumstances the publisher
frankly admitted to the author that, while he could not agree with all of
the printer's criticisms, he thought the story open to grave objection,
and its publication of doubtful expediency.
Believing only that he was the victim of some extraordinary
typographical blunder, the author at once sat down and read the proof.
In its new dress, with the metamorphosis of type,--that metamorphosis
which every writer so well knows changes his relations to it and makes
it no longer seem a part of himself,--he was able to read it with
something of the freshness of an untold tale. As he read