productions, a personal sacrifice would at this juncture be in the
last degree heroic. This last suggestion had the effect of ending all
further discussion, for he at once informed the publisher that the
question of the propriety of the story was no longer at issue: the
only question was of his capacity to exercise the proper editorial
judgment; and that unless he was permitted to test that capacity by
the publication of the story, and abide squarely by the result, he
must resign his editorial position. The publisher, possibly struck
with the author's confidence, possibly from kindliness of disposition
to a younger man, yielded, and "The Luck of Roaring Camp" was
published in the current number of the magazine for which it was
written, as it was written, without emendation, omission, alteration,
or apology. A not inconsiderable part of the grotesqueness of the
situation was the feeling, which the author retained throughout the
whole affair, of the perfect sincerity, good faith, and seriousness of
his friend's--the printer's--objection, and for many days thereafter
he was haunted by a consideration of the sufferings of this
conscientious man, obliged to assist materially in disseminating the
dangerous and subversive doctrines contained in this baleful fiction.
What solemn protests must have been laid with the ink on the rollers
and impressed upon those wicked sheets! what pious warnings must have
been secretly folded and stitched in that number of "The Overland
Monthly"! Across the chasm of years and distance the author stretches
forth the hand of sympathy and forgiveness, not forgetting the gentle
proof-reader, that chaste and unknown nymph, whose mantling cheeks and
downcast eyes gave the first indications of warning.

But the troubles of the "Luck" were far from ended. It had secured an
entrance into the world, but, like its own hero, it was born with an
evil reputation, and to a community that had yet to learn to love it.