WOODSMEN OF THE WEST.* Mn, GRAINGER, for all we know,
would be shocked if he were told that be had achieved a literary feat. For nowhere does he try to be literary in the sense which has imposed on modern letters a distinction between what is " literary " and what may be very serviceable and well-managed writing, but does not suggest to the race of critics the word "literary." And yet if literature is the art of using the right words in the right way to produce particular effects— and what else can it or ought it to mean P—Mr. Grainger has performed a literary feat. He goes to Vancouver, becomes a "logger," and writes a narrative of "logging" in those fretted inlets between Vancouver Island and the main- land, and writes it in the language of "loggers." His writing falls on your ear, as you say the words over to yourself, like a burst of conversation from a bar-room in the West. It seems very casual. But as you read on you become conscious that Mr. Grainger has really got his language and his ideas very well in hand; he makes his impressions as with the cut of an axe and with no waste of material. Other writers might have been explanatory or apologetic. He knows, whether by intuition or rule (if it be rule, we wish many others could learn it), that the reader who does not catch the spirit of the thing correctly from a phrase at once will do so when the phrase or thought recurs, just as one learns from repetitions and new associa- tions when one is struggling with an unfamiliar language. When one has read this book one knows the language of the West, or at least the language of the loggers ; and, further than that, one knows the loggers' life. There can be no question about that; the narrative is real, and necessarily true.
Mr. Grainger does not draw an heroic picture. The loggers are not Pistols or Faletaffs, or modem. "bad men" like Billy the Kid. They have their men in buckram, and to spare, to overcome in the actual labour of the axe every day in the forest, and they would swallow many hard words to avoid a quarrel. In the winter the dreari- ness, the monotony, and the hard exactions of the life are a. positive oppression. It is a dim and lonely time; the hills, clothed darkly with the primeval forest which seems to drink in and destroy the light, fall steeply into the water, and the water is leaden, except when seared white with the heavy gusts. The ghosts of ages seem to haunt the hills and cry in the wind. Under such conditions a man retires glumly upon himself. He makes up his mind to a cloistered existence, and excusably thinks it no lack of virtue not to sally out and meet his enemies in spite of all the stories of Western pugnacity. Still, there are reactions from the quietude, and no one who has had any experience of remote places need be told in detail what they are like. The visit to the great town means, typically, drink. It means much drink,—frank, unresisting, prolonged drunkenness. A man
* Woodsmen of the West. By N, Allardale Grainger. London: Edward Arnold. [7o. 6d. net.] keeps himself at a certain pitch of intoxication; he practises the art of "looking bad but feeling good." The astonishing thing with loggers, as with lonely farmers and miners all the world over, is that they can check themselves when the time has come to stop. There is no sequel as a rule ; they do not. drink in camp ; the bout was a detached episode. Mr. Grainger has taken the wise course of concentrating his efforts on describing one character,—a logger called Carter. We cannot say that Carter is the type of his class ; but we do verily believe that Carter himself does, or did, exist, and that on a temperament like his the conditions would produce precisely the results which Mr. Grainger has marked and recorded. Carter is a tour de force. We shall not easily forget him, and Mr. Grainger may be proud of him now just as devoutly as be hated him while he served him.
Although Mr. Grainger is not autobiographical more than is necessary, he has an engaging and rather unusual philosophy of his own. It would perhaps he true to say that we could not have had Carter were it not so, for Carter is here the resultant of two forces, of which Mr. Grainger's character is distinctly one. Here is an expression of Mr. Grainger's philosophy of work, surely very vivid. He is talking to a man known as Al, and we quote a bit of the conversation and Mr. Grainger's comment :— " • Why did you quit Jenkins' camp?' I asked him. Well, you see, sah, it was a professional matter. I was tending hook there. Perhaps you know something about steam P ... Well, I'll explain that for getting IA logs a man must have 180 lbs. pressure. The engineer said he had, but I knew he was scared of the donkey.. boiler and he only got 130 at most out of her. With that pressure I couldn't get out the logs, sah, in a satisfactory manner. . . . Jenkins and I parted very friendly, sah. . . . Yes, I was getting six dollars a day and board. . . . Oh, well ! what does it matter what wages a man like me gets, sail P I only drink them up.' You may sniff and cry common-sense ; but it warms me to meet a man who has been capable of single-minded action for a simple sentiment. Here was Al, who had been asked to tolerate some mediocre doings—and his soul had rebelled, and he had left a comfortable job. I like this bettor than the trained sense for instantaneous compromise that many decent, educated men develop. I like the artist's pride, the boyish craving for efficient performance, the feeling for sound, clean work, and the very moderate care for consequences."
Mr. Grainger engages himself to Carter, who bad worked his way up from being a hand-logger to being a capitalist witb a " donk " (donkey-engine) of his own and his own staff of axe- men,—whom he could never keep long. At first Mr. Grainger enjoys the life :— "Altogether there is much to make a man feel good—and he mostly does—at such healthy work. Then the dinner-gong booms from the cook-house as a pleasant surprise ; he goes down and eats heartily ; sits awhile and yarns ; shakes off the slight dis- taste that comes from muscular stiffness and cold, sweat-soaked clothes, and goes back and works with visible result till supper- time draws near and he begins to feel he has done about enough. After supper, lying on his bunk with his mind in a pleasant state of rest, he can feel secure that all the worries of the day are buried and done with for ever. The day's work is over; it has been, as it were, a complete life. The new life of to-morrow is like the life beyond death—it and its problems can, remarkably well, wait their turn."
Carter, too, seems to be agreeable enough, and relates his life to Mr. Grainger in the long evenings. Indeed, we must say that the revulsion of feeling in Mr. Grainger's mind is a. surprise to the reader, coming both too suddenly and too violently. Carter is a clumsy but resolute fellow, who butts his way through the world, spending, perhaps, mole then half his time in removing obstacles of his own creation. He works his way "right straight along." After some time, Carter lets Mr. Grainger know that he expects him to make a long journey to Port-Browning in a small boat which is quite
unfitted for the adventure :—
" Carter looked across me. 6 I'll fix her for you,' he said; and stalked away over the boom to where the boat was tied. The boat was full of snow. Carter shovelled some of it out, and trod down the rest. She had taken considerable water. Carter baled it out. She's ready for you,' he called ; tumble in your traps and get started right away. The weather's good.' It was not; the slight swell told of a wind blowing away down by Anwati. But Carter was magnificent! The dramatic vigour of his actions, the very wave of his hand, contrived to put me in the most ridiculous light should I try to protest. Protest would sound so pitifully feeble in face of such convinced, competent ignorance. Carter had forced my hand, had rushed me, in a superbly efficient way. My only chance was to get angry and violent; and I never felt less like violence in my life. I was fascinated by his charming brutality, by the way lie ignored my convenience, by the utterly unnoticed sacrifice of my interests to his necessities . . . and I
could only grin. The brute ! he played that scene so well that I chuckle still in recalling it."
At last the frequent impact of Carter's deplorably efficient inhumanity on Mr. Grainges feelings has the inevitable result. Something snaps ; Mr. Grainger's nerves are shattered into fragments ; his one consuming idea is to be quit of the job he had sought with so much anxious pain. The culmina- tion seems to us a quite first-rate piece of writing :—
"Carter came in and sat him down, and then Francois. Carter, I saw, was in a villainous bad temper. He began to eat. Cook we two eggs,' he barked suddenly. I went to cook them without realising his tone. 'Take the lid off the stove,' shouted Carter. I felt there was something wrong. Turn them eggs.' It burst open me with a rush. This was Carter's railroad foreman's manner—a manner that I had seen him use to other men ! This was the first time he had tried that manner upon me. rut salt and pepper on them.' It was an order—staccato. The tone cut sue like a whip. I heard his words with difficulty ; the word 'salt' was indistinct. There was a throbbing in my ears. I had some idea of going closer to him to hear the better. . . . I found myself floating towards him in a sort of atmosphere that shook in little waves like the shimmering of air upon a plain, under a blazing sun. I did not hear my own steps or feel my own move- ments. The air buoyed me up. Objects surrounding Carter, in that cook-house scene, were of foggy outline, blurred; and only objects near to him were visible at all. Fog cut off the -rest. It was like looking down a tunnel. But in the middle of the tunnel, clear cut and distinct, was Carter's face, framed in black hair and beard. My eye caught Carter's—Carter's black -beady eye. WHAT &Luca ?' I yelled in Carter's face.... It was touch and go. My fists were quivering for the blows ; nerves Along the inside of my wrists and up my arms were itching. I could feel a sort of succulent anticipation of the collapse of the cranky table, the smash of the shattering crockery, the wrestle and Tall and bump as Carter's bob/ and mine should reach the floor. There I would bash him in the face and put an arm lock on him. A gloating thrill ran through me to think how I would listen for the crack of Carter's dislocated arm as the lock bent it back -beyond the natural outstretch. There would not be much moving of that arm for Carter for the next three months or so.. .. Then 'Carter's eye dropped from mine, and I had a vivid picture of a sparkling Carter looking at a sparkling plate upon the breakfast table. Notes of mildness came to me across the vibrating air. The mac seemed to soothe me, seemed somehow to put a sudden check upon the spring I was about to make. I felt my whole frame relax from a great tension—every nerve untauton, almost noisily. But what words Carter spoke I do not know, nor even what happened then. . . . I came to my prosaic self kneeling upon the bunk- Amuse floor. I was engaged in rolling up my blankets, with move- ments swift and intent. My bag had long been packed, ready for departure at any time. I took my bag and blanket-roll and rushed open the bunk-house door—and met Carter coming, face to face. . . . The logger' quitting' is a man of great punctilio.
I played the perfect logger. Well,' said I, faultlessly correct, 'guess I'm going down the Inlet."
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