The Moccasin Maker | Page 5

justifies the feeling, everywhere
expressed, that Canada has lost a true poet.
Such a loss may not be thought a serious one by the sordid man who
decries poetry as the useless product of an art already in its decay.
Should this ever be the case, it would be a monstrous symptom, a
symptom that the noblest impulses of the human heart are decaying
also. The truth is, as the greatest of English critics, Hazlitt, has told us,
that "poetry is an interesting study, for this reason, that it relates to
whatever is most interesting in human life. Whoever, therefore, has a
contempt for poetry, has a contempt for himself and humanity."
Turning from Miss Johnson's verse to her prose, there is ample
evidence that, had she applied herself, she would have taken high rank
as a writer of fiction. Her "Legends of Vancouver" is a remarkable
book, in which she relates a number of Coast-Indian myths and
traditions with unerring insight and literary skill. These legends had a
main source in the person of the famous old Chief, Capilano, who, for
the first time, revealed them to her in Chinook, or in broken English,
and, as reproduced in her rich and harmonious prose, belong
emphatically to what has been called "The literature of power." Bound
together, so to speak, in the retentive memory of the old Chief, they are
authentic legends of his people, and true to the Indian nature. But we
find in them, also, something that transcends history. Indefinable forms,
earthly and unearthly, pass before us in mystical procession, in a world

beyond ordinary conception, in which nothing seems impossible.
The origin of the Indian's myths, East or West, cannot be traced, and
must ever remain a mystery. But, from his immemorial ceremonies and
intense conservatism, we may reasonably infer that many of them have
been handed down from father to son, unchanged, from the prehistoric
past to the present day; a past contemporary, perhaps, with the
mastodon, but certainly far back in the mists of antiquity. The
importance of rescuing them from oblivion is plain enough, and
therefore the untimely death of Miss Johnson, who was evidently
turning with congenital fitness to the task, is doubly to be regretted. For
as Mr. Bernard McEnvoy well says in his preface to her "Vancouver
Legends," she "has linked the vivid present with the immemorial past....
In the imaginative power that she has brought to these semi-historical
Sagas, and in the liquid flow of her rhythmical prose she has shown
herself to be a literary worker of whom we may well be proud."
It is believed to be the general wish of Miss Johnson's friends that some
tribute of a national and permanent character should be paid to her
memory; not indeed to preserve it--her own works will do that--but as a
visible mark of public esteem. In this regard, what could be better than
a bronze statue of life-size, with such accompanying symbols as would
naturally suggest themselves to a competent artist? Vancouver, in
which she spent her latter years, the city she loved, and in which she
died, is its proper home; and, as to its site, the spot in Stanley Park
where she wished her ashes to be laid is surely, of all places, the most
appropriate.
But whatever shape, in the opinion of her friends, the memorial should
take, it is important, in any case, that it should be worthy of her genius,
and a fitting memento of her services to Canadian letters.
Fort Steele, B.C., September, 1913.

My Mother

The Story of a Life of Unusual Experiences
[Author's Note.--This is the story of my mother's life, every incident of
which she related to me herself. I have neither exaggerated nor
curtailed a single circumstance in relating this story. I have supplied
nothing through imagination, nor have I heightened the coloring of her
unusual experiences. Had I done so I could not possibly feel as sure of
her approval as I now do, for she is as near to me to-day as she was
before she left me to join her husband, my beloved father, whose feet
have long since wandered to the "Happy Hunting Grounds" of my dear
Red Ancestors.]
PART I.
It was a very lonely little girl that stood on the deck of a huge sailing
vessel while the shores of England slipped down into the horizon and
the great, grey Atlantic yawned desolately westward. She was leaving
so much behind her, taking so little with her, for the child was grave
and old even at the age of eight, and realized that this day meant the
updragging of all the tiny roots that clung to the home soil of the older
land. Her father was taking his wife and family, his household