I had known such a
woman, older, but with the same characteristics, the same struggles,
temptations, and suffering the same restriction of her life and movements
by the prejudice in her veins--the prejudice of racial predilection.
Looking at the story now after its publication, I am inclined to think
that the introduction of the gipsy element was too bold, yet I believe it
was carefully worked out in construction, and was a legitimate,
intellectual enterprise. The danger of it was that it might detract from
the reality and vividness of the narrative as a picture of Western life.
Most American critics of the book seem not to have been struck by this
doubt which has occurred to me. They realize perhaps more faithfully than
some of the English critics have done that these mad contrasts are by no
means uncommon in the primitive and virile life of the West and North.
Just as California in the old days, just as Ballaret in Australia drew
the oddest people from every corner of the world, so Western towns, with
new railways, brought strange conglomerations into the life. For
instance, a town like Winnipeg has sections which represent the life of
nearly every race of Europe, and towns like Lebanon and Manitou, with
English and French characteristics controlling them mainly, are still as
subject to outside racial influences as to inside racial antagonisms.
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