a big surprise--more like history lessons
I always associated Bret Harte with Mark Twain. I don't know why. So I expected this book to be more like the humerous Twain stories that I have read. Wrong ! Bret Harte was a college graduate from the east, that was moved to the west coast by his widowed mother. He became the editor of one paper, then another. His stories, all twenty-three in this book, are centered in the central valley of California where, by the way, I grew up. So it was most interesting to hear about all the floods in and around Sacramento during the time of these stories. Many of the stories sound like they came from one of his editorials in the paper he wrote for. All are realistic, and from the days of the gold rush. The Luck of Roaring Camp is about an orphaned baby of a prostitute in one of the gold camps, and how the miners took over the care of the baby, feeding him milk from a donkey. The camp soon becomes alive with luck, which is attributed to the baby, and hence the baby is called Luck. However, a flood comes along and wipes out the camp and kills many of the miners, including the baby Luck. You see why I said that the stories sound like they came right from his paper. All of the stories are similar. Realistic and brutally of the times.
