Kimball, who had the gift of producing beautiful books, but perhaps had
not the same gift of business. These two American volumes succeeding
Pierre were published under the title of An Adventurer of the North and A
Romany of the Snows respectively. Now, the latter title, A Romany of the
Snows, was that which I originally chose for the volume published in
England as An Adventurer of the North. I was persuaded to reject the
title, A Romany of the Snows, by my English publisher, and I have never
forgiven myself since for being so weak. If a publisher had the
infallible instinct for these things he would not be a publisher--he
would be an author; and though an author may make mistakes like everybody
else, the average of his hits will be far higher than the average of his
misses in such things. The title, An Adventurer of the North, is to my
mind cumbrous and rough, and difficult in the mouth. Compare it with some
of the stories within the volume itself: for instance, The Going of the
White Swan, A Lovely Bully, At Bamber's Boom, At Point o' Bugles, The
Pilot of Belle Amour, The Spoil of the Puma, A Romany of the Snows, and
The Finding of Fingall. There it was, however; I made the mistake and it
sticks; but the book now will be published in this subscription edition
under the title first chosen by me, A Romany of the Snows. It really does
express what Pierre was.

Perhaps some of the stories in A Romany of the Snows have not the
sentimental simplicity of some of the earlier stories in Pierre and His
People, which take hold where a deeper and better work might not seize
the general public; but, reading these later stories after twenty years,
I feel that I was moving on steadily to a larger, firmer command of my
material, and was getting at closer grips with intimate human things.
There is some proof of what I say in the fact that one of the stories in
A Romany of the Snows, called The Going of the White Swan, appropriately
enough published originally in Scribner's Magazine, has had an