The Luck Of Roaring Camp
"The Luck of Roaring Camp" is a short story by American author Bret Harte. It was first published in the August 1868 issue of the Overland Monthly and helped push Harte to international prominence.
The story is about the birth of a baby boy in a 19th century gold prospecting camp. The boy's mother, Cherokee Sal, dies in childbirth, so the men of Roaring Camp must raise it themselves. Believing the child to be a good luck charm, the miners christen the boy Thomas Luck. Afterwards, they decide to refine their behavior and refrain from gambling and fighting. At the end of the story, however, Luck and a villager, Kentuck, perish in a flash flood that strikes the camp. The flood theme may have come from the Great Flood of California, witnessed by Harte in 1862, which resulted from weeks of torrential rains throughout the entire state, combined with warming temperatures in mid January that melted the snowpack. In addition to the melt-waters, according to the Sacramento Union newspapers of the day, six to ten feet of rain fell in some mining areas near Grass Valley.
Read more about The Luck Of Roaring Camp: Plot Summary, Characters, Adaptations
Famous quotes containing the words luck, roaring and/or camp:
“More luck to honest poverty,
It claims respect, and a’ that;
But honest wealth’s a better thing,
We dare be rich for a’ that.”
—Shirley Brooks (1816–1874)
“they smile in secret, looking over wasted lands,
Blight and famine, plague and earthquake, roaring deeps and fiery sands,
Clanging fights, and flaming towns, and sinking ships, and praying hands.”
—Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892)
“We could not well camp higher, for want of fuel; and the trees here seemed so evergreen and sappy, that we almost doubted if they would acknowledge the influence of fire; but fire prevailed at last, and blazed here, too, like a good citizen of the world.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)