FICTION.
THE CITY OF HOPE.*
WE remember years ago reading a notice of a novel dealing with life in Cornwall, in which the reviewer expressed regret that the author bad not given a detailed account of the pilchard fishing industry. Such a complaint is not likely to be made nowadays. Fiction has enlarged its boundaries in every direction. The novel with a purpose is no new thing, but a great many subjects are now regarded as legitimate themes for dramatic or imaginative treatment which used to be regarded as the province of the dealer in unadorned fact. Education, economics, industrial conditions, are all fair game for the novelist, who has exploited these new fields with such industry as virtually to supersede the pamphleteer. Romance is not excluded from Miss Fox Smith's story of the great North-West ; the fine quality of her verse—familiar to leaders of the Spectator—is a sufficient guarantee for that. But while her poems have been, for the moat part, concerned with the life of sailormen, the scene of her first novel- is exclusively laid on land. The book is in essentials a record of 'hard fact rather than a glorification of adventure. It has its merits as a story, but it is in the warning and instruction which it conveys to younger eons, and, above all, to their parents and guardians, that its value really resides. Of late years Canada 'has come to be regarded as the El Dorado of the emigrant. The number, not only of individuals, but of families who have gone out to British Columbia to make a fresh start is very -considerable. Enthusiasm has in many cases been followed by disillusionment ; and Miss Fox Smith is rendering a public service by her unvarnished account of what life on the 7 • TIN Cita-OPE*. By C. FOS Smith: London: Sidgwick d Jackson. [cal prairie really means—of its' loneliness; privations, perils, and lack of amenity. The life that she describes so graphically breaks all but those of the toughest fibre. It is not that the average young Englishman who goes out
to farm is a waster, but that he courts failure by his ignor- ance and inadequate or unsuitable equipment. Mr. Gladstone
condemned the aspiration of those who had in them the makings of good artisans to become indifferent clerks. Here we have the converse in the case of young men whose chief qualifications are literary aspiring to become inefficient labourers. The tragic side of it is well put in the words of Crawford, a melancholy settler who had himself " worried through," thodgh he had bought his experience dear :— `"You'll hear people talk—haven't I heard it?—a lot of claptrap about the free, open life, and the lack of temptations to lead a young fellow astray, and the wonderful opportunities there are for anyone that isn't afraid of work. My God ! I'd like to see some of those folks try it ! I'd like to see some of 'em work, as English lads fresh from the public schools are doing year after year in this country—work at the kind of jobs people are expected to go into hysterics about, when Siberian convicts are doing them, and not their own kin ! . . You remember that boy that worked beside you in the sewer? And what he said about his mother P . . . Can't you fancy her ? Can't you just hear her telling people about her boy in Canada, and how brightly he writes home, and how he is enjoying roughing it,—" he always loved camping, and being out•of-doors—and, of course, in Canada nobody thinks any the worse of you, don't you know, for working with your hands!" . . . And it's the boys with grit that Buffer; the rotters don't stop long enough for that.. . . The good plucked 'uns keep it to them- selves . . . break their health and their hearts before they'll whimper . .. and write fairy tales home to comfort their mothers. . . . Oh, don't I know it? Haven't I seen 'em coming out, with their skates, and perhaps a gun, and most likely their dress-clothes in a grip, because they've heard about all the winter jollifications in • Canada ? . . . It's a fine joke, for Johnny Csnuck to hold his sides about, laughing ; but . . . I don't know . . I never could see the funny side of it, myself. I don't suppose that boy's mother saw it, either, when she got the cablegram from the hospital.'—' But lots of fellows do well out here, after all,' Mark said, 'and I don't see that hard- ships need hurt anybody.'—' Oh yes, lots make good,' Crawford admitted, and what's more, if anyone ever deserved success, they deserve it ! Tell me of any profession, any occupation under the sun, that you could pitch a lad into in England, without capital, without experience, without training, and expect him to advance himself. Yet that's what people are doing here, all the time. Why, man, the nice English boys that come out bore aren't as well equipped, in anything but pluck, as the Bernardo gutter- snipes that have had a few months in the carpenter's shop. . . . And it's the ones that don't succeed—those are what I can't forget! . . . Not so much the ones that die. Life's not every- thing. Plenty of worse things can come to a man than to be decently dead. . . . The lads that get down and out . . . have bad luck . . . get sick, perhaps . . . and can't pull themselves out of the mire again. Believe me, there are depths a man can touch in this country, as low as any you can find in the old world.'"
Hope City, on the arrival of the hero, reminds one not a little of Eden in Martin Chuulewit, and Mark Russell bad no Mark Tapley to keep him company. He is bilked by his employer, a déclassé Englishman, who not only fails to carry out his agreement, but dismisses him at the first opportunity.
Under his next master, a Dakotan, Mark has an even worse time. Ray Mundy is an efficient slave-driver, but the situe,
tion is rendered intolerable for Mark by the attentions of his daughter Roxie, a vulgar, odious, and dangerous flirt. He is
reduced to working as a common navvy, when he falls in with Crawford, and then slowly but steadily the tide turns. The misunderstandings which estrange him from the girl of his choice are somewhat artificially contrived, but the sentimental interest is not the strong point of the book.
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