Bret Harte, 2 stories

[fiefoe]

"The Luck of Roaring Camp"

__ “The d—d little cuss!” he said, as he extricated his finger, with, perhaps, more tenderness and care than he might have been deemed capable of showing. He held that finger a little apart from its fellows as he went out, and examined it curiously. The examination provoked the same original remark in regard to the child. In fact, he seemed to enjoy repeating it. “He rastled with my finger,” he remarked to Tipton, holding up the member, “the d—d little cuss!”

__ “It’s better,” said the philosophical Oakhurst, “to take a fresh deal all round. Call him Luck, and start him fair.”

"The Outcasts of Poker Flat"

__ She then set herself to the task of amusing “the child,” as she and the Duchess were pleased to call Piney. Piney was no chicken, but it was a soothing and original theory of the pair thus to account for the fact that she didn’t swear and wasn’t improper.

Courtesy of the introduction, I now know of Bret Harte's falling out with Mark Twain. 'Harte rips Twain in this tale as a thief and impostor whose reign of terror is "about played out."' I would have thought the two stories simply belong to that particular sub-genre, Save-The-Last-Death-For-The-Last-Paragraph, but actually 'the story is a subtle parody, a nineteenth-century version of Monty Python's The Life of Brian that suggests the consequences of worshipping Mammon or a false god.'

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