of Quebec,
before a men else, I should say, "Born with the golden spoon in his
mouth."

To you I come with this book, which contains the first thing I ever
wrote out of the life of the Province so dear to you, and the last
things also that I shall ever write about it. I beg you to receive it as
the loving recreation of one who sympathises with the people of who you
come, and honours their virtues, and who has no fear for the unity, and
no doubt as to the splendid future, of the nation, whose fibre is got of
the two great civilising races of Europe.

Lastly, you will know with what admiration and regard I place your
name on the fore page of my book, and greet in you the statesman, the
litterateur, and the personal friend.

Believe me,
Dear Sir Wilfrid Laurier,
Yours very sincerely,
GILBERT PARKER.

20 CARLTON HOUSE TERRACE, LONDON, S. W.,
14th August, 1900.

INTRODUCTION

The story with which this book opens, 'The Lane That Had No Turning',
gives the title to a collection which has a large share in whatever
importance my work may possess. Cotemporaneous with the Pierre
series, which deal with the Far West and the Far North, I began in
the 'Illustrated London News', at the request of the then editor, Mr.
Clement K. Shorter, a series of French Canadian sketches of which
the first was 'The Tragic Comedy of Annette'. It was followed by 'The
Marriage of the Miller, The House with the Tall Porch, The Absurd
Romance of P'tite Louison, and The Woodsman's Story of the Great White
Chief'. They were begun and finished in the autumn of 1892 in lodgings
which I had taken on Hampstead Heath. Each--for they were all very
short--was written at a sitting, and all had their origin in true
stories which had been told me in the heart of Quebec itself. They were
all beautifully illustrated in the Illustrated London News, and in their
almost monosyllabic narrative, and their almost domestic simplicity,
they were in marked contrast to the more strenuous episodes of the
Pierre series. They were indeed in keeping with the happily simple and
uncomplicated life of French Canada as I knew it then; and I had perhaps
greater joy in writing them and the purely French Canadian stories that
followed them, such as 'Parpon the Dwarf, A Worker in Stone, The Little
Bell of Honour, and The Prisoner', than in almost anything else I have
written, except perhaps 'The Right of Way and Valmond'