The Moccasin Maker | Page 4

certainly, which lasted, one is sorry to say,
far down in our literary history.

Probably owing to this, and partly through advice, and partly by
inclination, Miss Johnson took to the public platform for a living, and
certainly justified her choice of a vocation by her admirable
performances. They were not sensational, and therefore not
over-attractive to the groundling; but to discerners, who thought highly
of her art, they seemed the perfection of monologue, graced by a
musical voice, and by gesture at once simple and dignified.
As this is an appreciation and a tribute to Miss Johnson's memory
rather than a criticism, the writer will touch but lightly upon the more
prominent features of her productions. Without being obtrusive, not the
least of these is her national pride, for nothing worthier, she thought,
could be said of a man than
"That he was born in Canada, beneath the British flag."
In her political creed wavering and uncertainty had no place. She saw
our national life from its most salient angles, and, in current phrase, she
saw it whole. In common, therefore, with every Canadian poet of
eminence, she had no fears for Canada, if she be but true to herself.
Another opinion is not likely to be challenged, viz., that much of her
poetry is unique, not only in subject, but also in the sincerity of her
treatment of themes so far removed from the common range. Intense
feeling distinguishes her Indian poems from all others; they flow from
her very veins, and are stamped with the seal of heredity. This strikes
one at every reading, and not less their truth to fact, however idealized.
Indeed the wildest of them, "Ojistoh" (The White Wampum), is based
upon an actual occurrence, though the incident took place on the
Western plains, and the heroine was not a Mohawk. The same intensity
marks "The Cattle Thief," and "A Cry From an Indian Wife." Begot of
her knowledge of the long-suffering of her race, of iniquities in the past
and present, they poured red-hot from her inmost heart.
One turns, however, with a sense of relief from those fierce
dithyrambics to the beauty and pathos of her other poems. Take, for
example, that exquisite piece of music, "The Lullaby of the Iroquois,"
simple, yet entrancing! Could anything of its kind be more perfect in

structure and expression? Or the sweet idyll, "Shadow River," a
transmutation of fancy and fact, which ends with her own philosophy:
"O! pathless world of seeming! O! pathless life of mine whose deep
ideal Is more my own than ever was the real. For others fame And
Love's red flame, And yellow gold: I only claim The shadows and the
dreaming."
And this ideality, the hall-mark of her poetry, has a character of its own,
a quality which distinguishes it from the general run of subjective verse.
Though of the Christian faith, there is yet an almost pagan yearning
manifest in her work, which she indubitably drew from her Indian
ancestry. That is, she was in constant contact with nature, and saw
herself, her every thought and feeling, reflected in the mysterious world
around her.
This sense of harmony is indeed the prime motive of her poetry, and
therein we discern a brightness, a gleam, however fleeting, of mystic
light--
"The light that never was on sea or land, The consecration and the
poet's dream."
A suggestion of her attitude and sense of inter-penetration lurks in this
stanza:
"There's a spirit on the river, there's a ghost upon the shore, And they
sing of love and loving through the starlight evermore, As they steal
amid the silence and the shadows of the shore."
And in the following verses this "correspondence" is more distinctly
drawn:
"O! soft responsive voices of the night I join your minstrelsy, And call
across the fading silver light As something calls to me; I may not all
your meaning understand, But I have touched your soul in Shadow
Land."

"Sweetness and light" met in Miss Johnson's nature, but free from
sentimentality; and even a carping critic will find little to cavil at in her
productions. If fault should be found with any of them it would
probably be with such a narrative as "Wolverine." It "bites," like all her
Indian pieces, and conveys a definite meaning. But, written in the
conventional slang of the frontier, it jars with her other work, and
seems out of form, if not out of place.
However, no poet escapes a break at times, and Miss Johnson's work is
not to be judged, like a chain, by its weakest links. Its beauty, its
strength, its originality are unmistakable, and although, had she lived,
we might have looked for still higher flights of her genius, yet what we
possess is beyond price, and fully