Near the end of the story, the narrator describes how the men of Roaring Camp would bring baby Luck to work with them, sitting him down “on a blanket spread over pine-boughs.” This leads to a particularly poetic passage in which Harte describes baby Luck’s relationship to nature, using personification and imagery in the process:
Nature was his nurse and playfellow. For him she would let slip between the leaves golden shafts of sunlight that fell just within his grasp; she would send wandering breezes to visit him with the balm of bay and resinous gums; to him the tall red- woods nodded familiarly and sleepily, the bumble-bees buzzed, and the rooks cawed a slumbrous accompaniment.
The personification here—in which nature is referred to as baby Luck’s feminized “nurse and playfellow” who manipulates the weather, plants, and insects to please him—demonstrates the positive effects of growing up so close to the natural world. Baby luck is not stuck indoors all day, but rather gets to know nature intimately while sitting outside near his many adoptive fathers.
The imagery in this passage is also poignant. The narrator describes how “golden shafts of sunlight” “would slip between the leaves,” how “wandering breezes” would bring brilliant smells like “the balm of bay and resinous gums,” and how “the rooks cawed a slumbrous accompaniment.” With this rich imagery, Harte is hoping readers can see, feel, hear, and smell the beauty of the outdoors in the American West.
Of course, the loving and gentle nature depicted here ultimately turns on the baby and the men, killing them in a large winter flood. This is Harte’s way of highlighting the fleeting nature of luck as well as the ways that nature's power can lead to both joy and sorrow.
