Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Editorial Practice
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- The Tragedy of Crusoe, C.S.
- Twenty Years After
- Dis Aliter Visum
- De Profundis
- The Unlimited “Draw” of “Tick” Boileau
- My Christmas Caller
- The History of a Crime
- Prisoners and Captives
- “From Olympus to Hades”
- “Les Miserables.”
- A Nightmare of Rule
- What Came of It
- An Official Secret
- Le Roi en Exil
- A Scrap of Paper
- The Mystification of Santa Claus
- “Love in Old Cloathes”
- The Case of Adamah
- A Tale of ’98
- A Rather More Fishy Case
- The House of Shadows
- The Confession of an Impostor
- The Judgment of Paris
- Five Days After Date
- The Hill of Illusion
- Le Monde ou L'On S'Amuse
- An Intercepted Letter
- The Recurring Smash
- How Liberty Came to the Bolan
- “Under Sentence”
- The Dreitarbund
- In Memoriam
- On Signatures
- The Great Strike
- “The Biggest Liar in Asia”
- Deputating a Viceroy
- A Merry Christmas
- The New Year's Sermon
- New Year's Gifts
- Mister Anthony Dawking
- “The Luck of Roaring Camp”
- The Wedding Guest
- The Tracking of Chuckerbutti
- “Bread upon the Waters”
- A Free Gift
- A Hill Homily
- The “Kingdom” of Bombay
- Bombaystes Furioso
- A Day Off
- The Unpunishable Cherub
- In Gilded Halls
- “Till the Day Break”
- The Fountain of Honour
- The Burden of Nineveh
- His Natural Destiny
- That District Log-Book
- An Unequal Match
- A Horrible Scandal
- An Exercise in Administration
- My New Purchase
- Exercises in Administration
- The Dignity of It.
- Exercises in Administration
- In Wonderland
- In the Year ’92
- “A Free Hand”
- Susannah and the Elder
- The Coming K
- What the World Said
- An Interesting Condition
- The Comet of a Season
- Gallihauk's Pup
- The Inauthorated Corpses
- One Lady at Wairakei
- The Princess in the Pickle-Bottle
- Why Snow Falls at Vernet
- The Cause of Humanity
- appendices
- Glossary
“The Luck of Roaring Camp”
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 November 2018
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Editorial Practice
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- The Tragedy of Crusoe, C.S.
- Twenty Years After
- Dis Aliter Visum
- De Profundis
- The Unlimited “Draw” of “Tick” Boileau
- My Christmas Caller
- The History of a Crime
- Prisoners and Captives
- “From Olympus to Hades”
- “Les Miserables.”
- A Nightmare of Rule
- What Came of It
- An Official Secret
- Le Roi en Exil
- A Scrap of Paper
- The Mystification of Santa Claus
- “Love in Old Cloathes”
- The Case of Adamah
- A Tale of ’98
- A Rather More Fishy Case
- The House of Shadows
- The Confession of an Impostor
- The Judgment of Paris
- Five Days After Date
- The Hill of Illusion
- Le Monde ou L'On S'Amuse
- An Intercepted Letter
- The Recurring Smash
- How Liberty Came to the Bolan
- “Under Sentence”
- The Dreitarbund
- In Memoriam
- On Signatures
- The Great Strike
- “The Biggest Liar in Asia”
- Deputating a Viceroy
- A Merry Christmas
- The New Year's Sermon
- New Year's Gifts
- Mister Anthony Dawking
- “The Luck of Roaring Camp”
- The Wedding Guest
- The Tracking of Chuckerbutti
- “Bread upon the Waters”
- A Free Gift
- A Hill Homily
- The “Kingdom” of Bombay
- Bombaystes Furioso
- A Day Off
- The Unpunishable Cherub
- In Gilded Halls
- “Till the Day Break”
- The Fountain of Honour
- The Burden of Nineveh
- His Natural Destiny
- That District Log-Book
- An Unequal Match
- A Horrible Scandal
- An Exercise in Administration
- My New Purchase
- Exercises in Administration
- The Dignity of It.
- Exercises in Administration
- In Wonderland
- In the Year ’92
- “A Free Hand”
- Susannah and the Elder
- The Coming K
- What the World Said
- An Interesting Condition
- The Comet of a Season
- Gallihauk's Pup
- The Inauthorated Corpses
- One Lady at Wairakei
- The Princess in the Pickle-Bottle
- Why Snow Falls at Vernet
- The Cause of Humanity
- appendices
- Glossary
Summary
Published: Civil and Military Gazette, 17 January 1888.
Attribution: In Scrapbook 4 (28/4, p. 44).
Text: Civil and Military Gazette.
Notes: The American writer Bret Harte's ‘The Luck of Roaring Camp’, 1868, is collected in The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Stories, 1870. RK's various references to Harte show that he knew Harte's work well and that he was pleased to be compared to him; see, e.g., Letters, i, 151.
‘The Luck of Roaring Camp’ was reprinted in ‘Turnovers’, i, 1888; in the suppressed City of Dreadful Night, 1890; in the Martindell–Ballard pamphlets; and in Harbord, iv, 1962–4.
Our Club is profanely called a “cock and hen” one – that is to say, it is open to all the ladies and gentlemen of the station. Sometimes the ladies keep to their own wing of the building, but more generally they stray elsewhere, and it is positively dangerous for a man to say what he thinks of things in general, in his own language. The Colonel's wife always manages to overhear, and then there is friction, because she asks her husband what the funny words mean. I do not say that the Honorary Secretary, who first threw the Club open to ladies, ought to be hanged, because no other living man in the station would or could manage our Club. I only want to point out a few things about Mrs. McGinnis and the baby and Bret Harte. It is too late to destroy Bret Harte's reputation; the baby hasn't got any, and Mrs. McGinnis is only an ordinary frivoller; but as Mrs. Nickleby said, “the principle remains the same”. Bret Harte once wrote a thing called “The Luck of Roaring Camp,” that I have known people cry over. It is all about a child who turned a miners’ digging-town into a little heaven and then killed the best man in it. I believed in that story till the night before last. Now I see that it was all made up – fudged and compiled just like a Government report, and I desire that everybody else should see this also.
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- Information
- The Cause of Humanity and Other StoriesThe Cause of Humanity and Other Stories Uncollected Prose Fictions, pp. 188 - 191Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2018