Her Majesty's Guest
Mother o' the Men
The Nest Builder
The Tenas Klootchman
The Derelict



INTRODUCTION


The inducement to be sympathetic in writing a preface to a book like
this is naturally very great. The authoress was of Indian blood,
and lived the life of the Indian on the Iroquois Reserve with her
chieftain father and her white mother for many years; and though
she had white blood in her veins was insistently and determinedly
Indian to the end. She had the full pride of the aboriginal of pure
blood, and she was possessed of a vital joy in the legends, history
and language of the Indian race from which she came, crossed by
good white stock. But though the inducement to be sympathetic in
the case of so chivalrous a being who stood by the Indian blood
rather than by the white blood in her is great, there is, happily,
no necessity for generosity or magnanimity in the case of Pauline
Johnson. She was not great, but her work in verse in sure and
sincere; and it is alive with the true spirit of poetry. Her skill
in mere technique is good, her handling of narrative is notable,
and if there is no striking individuality--which might have been
expected from her Indian origin--if she was often reminiscent in her
manner, metre, form and expression, it only proves her a minor poet
and not a Tennyson or a Browning. That she should have done what