Days of '49

Days of '49 (1925)
by Gordon Young

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New York: George H. Doran Company, 1925.

Mr. Young's pictorial chronicle of the California gold rush dwarfs to insignificance preceding novels which have attempted, even with moderate success, to reconstruct the life of that fabulous and violent era. —From The Saturday Review of Literature, 26 December 1925. (Full review(s) on the Discussion page.)

3920034Days of '491925Gordon Young

Days of '49

GORDON YOUNG

BY GORDON YOUNG

Days of '49

Seibert of the Island

Wild Blood

Days of '49

By

GORDON YOUNG

NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

COPYRIGHT, 1925,
BY GORDON YOUNG

DAYS OF '49
—B—
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

DEDICATED

TO THE

NATIVE SONS AND DAUGHTERS

OF CALIFORNIA

Foreword

“Whoever wants merely an eulogistic story of the glories of the pioneer life in California must not look for it in history, and whoever is too tender-souled to see any moral beauty or significance in events that involve much foolishness, drunkenness, brutality, and lust must find his innocent interests satisfied elsewhere. But whoever knows that the struggle for the best things of man is a struggle against the basest passions of man,and that every significant historical process is full of such struggles, is ready to understand the true interest of scenes amid which civilization sometimes seemed to have lapsed into semi-barbarism. It is, of course, impossible to read this history without occasionally feeling a natural horror of the crimes that for a while were so frequent; but one's horror is itself a weakness, and must give way, for the most part, to a simple realistic delight in the jovial fortitude wherewith this new community bore the worst consequences of its own sins, and, after a remarkably short time, learned to forsake the most serious of them. Early California history is not for babes, nor for sentimentalists; but its manly wickedness is full of the strength that, on occasion, freely converts itself into an admirable moral heroism.”—California: A Study of American Character.—By Josiah Royce

Chapters (not listed in original)

This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published in 1925, before the cutoff of January 1, 1929.

The longest-living author of this work died in 1948, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 75 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.

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