FICTION.
ALBERTA AND THE OT.HERS.•
THE recent influx of settlers into Western Canada is beginning to bear literary fruit, and when it springs from first-hand experience, as in the case of Miss Madge Smith's story, its
value is beyond question. The West family were a high- spirited, self-reliant set of young people, who had grown dis- contented with their humdrum surroundings and limited opportunities in a small North of England town. Their parents were dead, and a variety of motives impelled them to seek their fortunes in Western Canada. Nomen, omen: Alberta West, the guiding spirit of the family, was naturally drawn towards the region where she suddenly inherited a couple of town Iota from the roving uncle and godfather who had been responsible for the choice of her Christian name twenty-odd years earlier. What
was the use, argued this spirited young lady, of being a landed proprietor if you did not visit your estate ? Her brothers—a budding architect and an amateur photographer —were attracted by the possibilities of lucrative employment, and her sisters by the lure of novelty. Finally, the persuasive eloquence of "Publicity Numbers," in which even the gum- chewing habit was represented as a virtue, and the charms of the climate and society were painted in glowing colours, proved irresistible, and overbore the misgivings of the faith- ful Aunt Mary and the reasoned objections of the family friend, Captain Kingsway, who had already been in Canada. Miss Smith's command of vivacious narrative is excellently shown in the account of the voyage out, in the portraits of the passengers, the picture of the loneliness of the Canadian landscape as seen from the Canadian Pacific Railway, and in the arrival of the West family at Sunshine City. Professor Stephen Leacock has given us a delightful account of Canadian provincial life in his Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town, but his scene was laid in the lakeland of Eastern Canada. Sun- shine City is on the edge of the prairie, a raw new town in which the ingenuous "green" English folk have to go through a somewhat painful process before they find their feet. The hasty purchase of a cheap outfit of tents induces them to try camp life for a spell, until they are driven into town by a blizzard, and rent a flat in Regina Block, a building inhabited by a ihighly miscellaneous com- munity, including seven real estate agents. The mistakes of the Wests are endless and heavily paid for, but they never wholly lose heart. The young architect, disappointed in his hopes of an official appointment, is content to earn a modest wage as a sign-painter. The young photographer, who turns his expert knowledge to practical account, is defrauded by his partner and reduced to take service as a harvest labourer and a navvy. Alberta serves a brief and catastrophic apprentice- ship as a society journalist. In short, all of them "get stung," as the phrase goes, and matters might have gone hard with them but for the opportune arrival of the family friend, Captain Kingsway. And even this hardened old campaigner signalizes his advent by a grotesque blunder before taking command of the situation, and, as may be readily guessed, exchanging the role of good genius for a closer relationship with the family.
The story is told with such animation and intimate know- ledge of the pains and penalties as well as the pleasures of the settler's life that we can only regret that the picture which it gives of the Western Canadian, at a time when the Dominion has rallied so splendidly to the defence of • Alberta and the Others, a Truthful Story of Western Canada. By Madge S. Smith. London : Sidgirick and Jackson. [62.]
the Mother Country in her hour of need, should emphasize his crudities and irregularities to the exclusion of the finer qualities which he undoubtedly possesses.
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