The Lane That Had No Turning | Page 2

world,
however, the phrase has a some what ironical suggestiveness, and to
have luxury, wealth, and place as a birthright is not thought to be the
most fortunate incident of mortality. My application of the phrase is,
therefore, different.
I have, as you know, travelled far and wide during the past seventeen
years, and though I have seen people as frugal and industrious as the
French Canadians, I have never seen frugality and industry associated

with so much domestic virtue, so much education and intelligence, and
so deep and simple a religious life; nor have I ever seen a priesthood at
once so devoted and high-minded in all the concerns the home life of
their people, as in French Canada. A land without poverty and yet
without riches, French Canada stands alone, too well educated to have a
peasantry, too poor to have an aristocracy; as though in her the ancient
prayer had been answered "Give me neither poverty nor riches, but feed
me with food convenient for me." And it is of the habitant of Quebec,
before a men else, I should say, "Born with the golden spoon in his
mouth."
To you I come with this book, which contains the first thing I ever
wrote out of the life of the Province so dear to you, and the last things
also that I shall ever write about it. I beg you to receive it as the loving
recreation of one who sympathises with the people of who you come,
and honours their virtues, and who has no fear for the unity, and no
doubt as to the splendid future, of the nation, whose fibre is got of the
two great civilising races of Europe.
Lastly, you will know with what admiration and regard I place your
name on the fore page of my book, and greet in you the statesman, the
litterateur, and the personal friend.
Believe me, Dear Sir Wilfrid Laurier, Yours very sincerely, GILBERT
PARKER.
20 CARLTON HOUSE TERRACE, LONDON, S. W., 14th August,
1900.

INTRODUCTION
The story with which this book opens, 'The Lane That Had No Turning',
gives the title to a collection which has a large share in whatever
importance my work may possess. Cotemporaneous with the Pierre
series, which deal with the Far West and the Far North, I began in the
'Illustrated London News', at the request of the then editor, Mr.
Clement K. Shorter, a series of French Canadian sketches of which the
first was 'The Tragic Comedy of Annette'. It was followed by 'The
Marriage of the Miller, The House with the Tall Porch, The Absurd
Romance of P'tite Louison, and The Woodsman's Story of the Great
White Chief'. They were begun and finished in the autumn of 1892 in
lodgings which I had taken on Hampstead Heath. Each--for they were

all very short--was written at a sitting, and all had their origin in true
stories which had been told me in the heart of Quebec itself. They were
all beautifully illustrated in the Illustrated London News, and in their
almost monosyllabic narrative, and their almost domestic simplicity,
they were in marked contrast to the more strenuous episodes of the
Pierre series. They were indeed in keeping with the happily simple and
uncomplicated life of French Canada as I knew it then; and I had
perhaps greater joy in writing them and the purely French Canadian
stories that followed them, such as 'Parpon the Dwarf, A Worker in
Stone, The Little Bell of Honour, and The Prisoner', than in almost
anything else I have written, except perhaps 'The Right of Way and
Valmond', so far as Canada is concerned.
I think the book has harmony, although the first story in it covers
eighty-two pages, while some of the others, like 'The Marriage of the
Miller', are less than four pages in length. At the end also there are nine
fantasies or stories which I called 'Parables of Provinces'. All of these, I
think, possessed the spirit of French Canada, though all are more or less
mystical in nature. They have nothing of the simple realism of 'The
Tragic Comedy of Annette', and the earlier series. These nine stories
could not be called popular, and they were the only stories I have ever
written which did not have an immediate welcome from the editors to
whom they were sent. In the United States I offered them to 'Harper's
Magazine', but the editor, Henry M. Alden, while, as I know, caring for
them personally, still hesitated to publish them. He thought them too
symbolic for the every-day reader. He had been offered four of them at
once because I declined to dispose of them separately, though the editor
of another magazine was willing to publish two of them. Messrs. Stone
& Kimball,