Yet he had to face what pioneers and reformers in old countries have to face, namely the disturbance of rooted interests.
Certainly rooted interests in towns but a generation old cannot be extensive or remarkable, but if they are associated with habits and principles, they may be as deadly as those which test the qualities and wreck the careers of men in towns as old as London.

The difference, however, between the old European town and the new Western town is that differences in the Western town are more likely to take physical form, as was the case in the life of Ingolby.

In order to accentuate the primitive and yet highly civilized nature of the life I chose my heroine from a race and condition more unsettled and more primitive than that of Lebanon or Manitou at any time.

I chose a heroine from the gipsy race, and to heighten the picture of the primitive life from which she had come I made her a convert to the settled life of civilization.

I had known such a woman, older, but with the same characteristics, the same struggles, temptations, and suffering the same restriction of her life and movements by the prejudice in her veins--the prejudice of racial predilection.
Looking at the story now after its publication, I am inclined to think that the introduction of the gipsy element was too bold, yet I believe it was carefully worked out in construction, and was a legitimate, intellectual enterprise.