and only emerged when it was full grown, as it were; when I was so
familiar with the characters that they seemed as real in all ways as
though they were absolute people and incidents of one's own experience.

Little more need be said. In outward form the publishers have made this
edition beautiful. I should be ill-content if there was not also an
element of beauty in the work of the author. To my mind truth alone
is not sufficient. Every work of art, no matter how primitive in
conception, how tragic or how painful, or even how grotesque in design
--like the gargoyles on Notre Dame must have, too, the elements of
beauty--that which lures and holds, the durable and delightful thing.
I have a hope that these books of mine, as faithful to life as I could
make them, have also been touched here and there by the staff of beauty.
Otherwise their day will be short indeed; and I should wish for them a
day a little longer at least than my day and span.

I launch the ship. May it visit many a port! May its freight never lie
neglected on the quays!




INTRODUCTION

So far as my literary work is concerned 'Pierre and His People' may be
likened to a new city built upon the ashes of an old one. Let me
explain. While I was in Australia I began a series of short stories
and sketches of life in Canada which I called 'Pike Pole Sketches on the
Madawaska'. A very few of them were published in Australia, and I
brought with me to England in 1889 about twenty of them to make into a