“They show precious little sense!” he declared; “but you’re right. It’s one of your English customs to go on from precedent to precedent until you get an unmodifiable standard, when you slavishly conform to it. Now your book’s neither a classification nor a catalogue—it’s something far bigger. Never mind what the experts and scientists say; wait until the people who love the wild things and want their story made real get it into their hands!”
His confidence was gratifying, but she changed the subject.
“You Canadians haven’t much respect for precedent?”
“No; we try to meet the varying need by constantly changing means. They’re often crude, but they’re successful, as a rule.”
“It’s a system that must have a wide effect,” she responded, to lead him on. She liked to hear him talk.
“It has. You can see it in the difference between your country and mine. This land’s smooth and well trimmed; everything in it has grown up little by little; its mellow ripeness is its charm. Ours is grand or rugged or desolate, but it’s never merely pretty. The same applies to our people; they’re bubbling over with raw, optimistic vigor, their corners are not rubbed off. Some of them would jar on overcivilized people, but not, I think, on any one with understanding.” He spread out his hands. “You have an example; I’m spouting at large again.”
“Go on,” she begged; “I’m interested. But have you ever thought that instead of being younger than we are you’re really older. I mean that you have gone back a long way; begun again at an earlier stage, instead of going ahead?”
“Now you get at the bottom of things!” he exclaimed. “That’s always been an idea of mine. The people of the newer countries, perhaps more particularly those to whom I belong, are brought back to the grapple with elemental conditions. We’re on the bed-rock of nature.”
“Are you too modest to go any further?”
He showed faint signs of confusion and she laughed. “No doubt, the situation makes for pristine vigor, and we are drifting into artificiality,” she suggested. “Perhaps you, the toilers, the subduers of the wilderness, are to serve as an anchor for the supercivilized generations to hold on by.” She paused and quoted softly: “‘Pioneers; O pioneers!’”