This volume contains two novels dealing with the life
of prairie people in the town of Askatoon in the far
West. ‘The World for Sale’ and the
latter portion of ‘The Money Master’ deal
with the same life, and ’The Money Master’
contained some of the characters to be found in ’Wild
Youth’. ‘The World for Sale’
also was a picture of prairie country with strife
between a modern Anglo-Canadian town and a French-Canadian
town in the West. These books are of the same
people; but ’You Never Know Your Luck’
and ‘Wild Youth’ have several characters
which move prominently through both.
In the introduction to ‘The World for Sale’
in this series, I drew a description of prairie life,
and I need not repeat what was said there. ‘In
You Never Know Your Luck’ there is a Proem which
describes briefly the look of the prairie and suggests
characteristics of the life of the people. The
basis of the book has a letter written by a wife to
her husband at a critical time in his career when
he had broken his promise to her. One or two
critics said the situation is impossible, because no
man would carry a letter unopened for a long number
of years. My reply is: that it is exactly
what I myself did. I have still a letter written
to me which was delivered at my door sixteen years
ago. I have never read it, and my reason for
not reading it was that I realised, as I think, what
its contents were. I knew that the letter would
annoy, and there it lies. The writer of the letter
who was then my enemy is now my friend. The chief
character in the book, Crozier, was an Irishman, with
all the Irishman’s cleverness, sensitiveness,
audacity, and timidity; for both those latter qualities
are characteristic of the Irish race, and as I am
half Irish I can understand why I suppressed a letter
and why Crozier did. Crozier is the type of man
that comes occasionally to the Dominion of Canada;
and Kitty Tynan is the sort of girl that the great
West breeds. She did an immoral thing in opening
the letter that Crozier had suppressed, but she did
it in a good cause—for Crozier’s sake;
she made his wife write another letter, and she placed
it again in the envelope for Crozier to open and see.
Whatever lack of morality there was in her act was
balanced by the good end to the story, though it meant
the sacrifice of Kitty’s love for Crozier, and
the making of his wife happy once more.
As for ‘Wild Youth’ I make no apology
for it. It is still fresh in the minds of the
American public, and it is true to the life. Some
critics frankly called it melodramatic. I do
not object to the term. I know nothing more melodramatic
than certain of the plots of Shakespeare’s plays.
Thomas Hardy is melodramatic; Joseph Conrad is melodramatic;
Balzac was melodramatic, and so were Victor Hugo, Charles
Dickens, and Sir Walter Scott. The charge of
melodrama is not one that should disturb a writer
of fiction. The question is, are the characters
