struggle against time and the carpet-bagger, to study these differences and place them upon record, before all trace of them should disappear.  And then I believe our historian, though he may find that in 1894 we paid too much attention to the minutiae of dialect, folk-lore and ethnic differences, and were inclined to overlay with these the more catholic principles of human conduct, will acknowledge that in our hour we did the work that was most urgent.  Our hour, no doubt, is not the happiest; but, since this is the work it brings, there can be no harm in going about it zealously.

CLUB TALK

Nov. 12, 1892.  Mr. Gilbert Parker.

Mr. Gilbert Parker’s book of Canadian tales, “Pierre and His People” (Methuen and Co.), is delightful for more than one reason.  To begin with, the tales themselves are remarkable, and the language in which they are told, though at times it overshoots the mark by a long way and offends by what I may call an affected virility, is always distinguished.  You feel that Mr. Parker considers his sentences, not letting his bolts fly at a venture, but aiming at his effects deliberately.  It is the trick of promising youth to shoot high and send its phrases in parabolic curves over the target.  But a slight wildness of aim is easily corrected, and to see the target at all is a more conspicuous merit than the public imagines.  Now Mr. Parker sees his target steadily; he has a thoroughly good notion of what a short story ought to be:  and more than two or three stories in his book are as good as can be.

Open Air v.  Clubs.

But to me the most pleasing quality in the book is its open-air flavor.  Here is yet another young author, and one of the most promising, joining the healthy revolt against the workshops.  Though for my sins I have to write criticism now and then, and use the language of the workshops, I may claim to be one of the rebels, having chosen to pitch a small tent far from cities and to live out of doors:  and it rejoices me to see the movement growing, as it undoubtedly has grown during the last few years, and find yet one more of the younger men refusing, in Mr. Stevenson’s words, to cultivate restaurant fat, to fall in mind “to a thing perhaps as low as many types of bourgeois—­the implicit or exclusive artist.”  London is an alluring dwelling-place for an author, even for one who desires to write about the country.  He is among the paragraph-writers, and his reputation swells as a cucumber under glass.  Being in sight of the newspaper men, he is also in their mind.  His prices will stand higher than if he go out into the wilderness.  Moreover, he has there the stimulating talk of the masters in his profession, and will be apt to think that his intelligence is developing amazingly, whereas in fact he is developing all on one side; and the end of him is—­the Exclusive Artist:—­