THE GREAT GOLD RUSH

PREFACE


There is a freemasonry among Klondikers which rules that no tales shall
be told out of school. If, therefore, this were an historical novel, if
I were telling tales and seeking to escape censure by the subterfuge of
changing names, I could hardly succeed. Let me take the case of Poo-Bah,
for instance. The reader with a knowledge of the early days of Dawson
accepting the story as historical, would fix as the original any one of
half a dozen men indecently caricatured. But if he is told the ...