Outcasts of Poker Flat," "Miggles," "Tennessee's Partner," and those
various other characters who had impressed the author when, a mere
truant schoolboy, he had lived among them. It is hardly necessary to
say to any observer of human nature that at this time he was advised
by kind and well-meaning friends to content himself with the success
of the "Luck," and not tempt criticism again; or that from that moment
ever after he was in receipt of that equally sincere contemporaneous
criticism which assured him gravely that each successive story was a
falling off from the last. Howbeit, by reinvigorated confidence in
himself and some conscientious industry, he managed to get together in
a year six or eight of these sketches, which, in a volume called "The
Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Sketches," gave him that encouragement
in America and England that has since seemed to justify him in
swelling these records of a picturesque passing civilization into the
compass of the present edition.

A few words regarding the peculiar conditions of life and society that
are here rudely sketched, and often but barely outlined. The author is
aware that, partly from a habit of thought and expression, partly
from the exigencies of brevity in his narratives, and partly from the
habit of addressing an audience familar with the local scenery, he
often assumes, as premises already granted by the reader, the
existence of a peculiar and romantic state of civilization, the like
of which few English readers are inclined to accept without
corroborative facts and figures. These he could only give by referring
to the ephemeral records of Californian journals of that date, and the
testimony of far-scattered witnesses, survivors of the exodus of
1849. He must beg the reader to bear in mind that this emigration was
either across a continent almost unexplored, or by the way of a long
and dangerous voyage around Cape Horn, and that the promised land