and expression, it only proves her a minor poet
and not a Tennyson or a Browning. That she should have done what
she did do, devotedly, with an astonishing charm and the delight
of inspired labour, makes her life memorable, as it certainly made
both life and work beautiful. The pain and suffering which attended
the latter part of her life never found its way into her work save
through increased sweetness and pensiveness. No shadow of death
fell upon her pages. To the last the soul ruled the body to its
will. Phenomenon Pauline Johnson was, though to call her a genius
would be to place her among the immortals, and no one was more
conscious of her limitations than herself. Therefore, it would do
her memory poor service to give her a crown instead of a coronet.

Poet she was, lyric and singing and happy, bright-visioned,
high-hearted, and with the Indian's passionate love of nature
thrilling in all she did, even when from the hunting-grounds of
poesy she brought back now and then a poor day's capture. She was
never without charm in her writing; indeed, mere charm was too
often her undoing. She could not be impersonal enough, and
therefore could not be great; but she could get very near to human
sympathies, to domestic natures, to those who care for pleasant,
happy things, to the lovers of the wild.

This is what she has done in this book called "The Moccasin Maker."
Here is a good deal that is biographical and autobiographical in
its nature; here is the story of her mother's life told with rare
graciousness and affection, in language which is never without
eloquence; and even when the dialogue makes you feel that the real
characters never talked as they do in this monograph, it is still
unstilted and somehow really convincing. Touching to a degree is
the first chapter, "My Mother," and it, with all the rest of the
book, makes one feel that Canadian literature would have been
poorer, that something would have been missed from this story of
Indian life if this volume had not been written. It is no argument
against the book that Pauline Johnson had not learnt the art of
short-story writing; she was a poetess, not a writer of fiction;
but the incidents described in many of these chapters show that,
had she chosen to write fiction instead of verse, and had begun at
an early stage in her career to do so, she would have succeeded.
Her style is always picturesque, she has a good sense of the
salient incident that makes a story,