Pretty
Pierre, the French half-breed, or rather the original of him as I knew
him when a child, looked out of the window at me. So I went home, and
sitting in front of the fire which had received my manuscript the night
before, with a pad upon my knee, I began to write 'The Patrol of the
Cypress Hills' which opens 'Pierre and His People'.
The next day was Sunday. I went to service at the Foundling Hospital in
Bloomsbury, and while listening superficially to the sermon I was also
reading the psalms. I came upon these words, "Free among the Dead like
unto them that are wounded and lie in the grave, that are out of
remembrance," and this text, which I used in the story 'The Patrol of the
Cypress Hills', became, in a sense, the text for all the stories which
came after. It seemed to suggest the lives and the end of the lives of
the workers of the pioneer world.
So it was that Pierre and His People chiefly concerned those who had been
wounded by Fate, and had suffered the robberies of life and time while
they did their work in the wide places. It may be that my readers have
found what I tried, instinctively, to convey in the pioneer life I
portrayed--"The soul of goodness in things evil.
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