The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Island Pharisees, by John Galsworthy

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Title: The Island Pharisees

Author: John Galsworthy

Release Date: June 14, 2006 [EBook #2771]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ISLAND PHARISEES ***

Produced by David Widger

THE ISLAND PHARISEES

By John Galsworthy

"But this is a worshipful society"
KING JOHN

PREFACE

Each man born into the world is born like Shelton in this book--to go a
journey, and for the most part he is born on the high road. At first
he sits there in the dust, with his little chubby hands reaching at
nothing, and his little solemn eyes staring into space. As soon as he
can toddle, he moves, by the queer instinct we call the love of life,
straight along this road, looking neither to the right nor left, so
pleased is he to walk. And he is charmed with everything--with the nice
flat road, all broad and white, with his own feet, and with the prospect
he can see on either hand. The sun shines, and he finds the road a
little hot and dusty; the rain falls, and he splashes through the muddy
puddles. It makes no matter--all is pleasant; his fathers went this way
before him; they made this road for him to tread, and, when they bred
him, passed into his fibre the love of doing things as they themselves
had done them. So he walks on and on, resting comfortably at nights
under the roofs that have been raised to shelter him, by those who went
before.

Suddenly one day, without intending to, he notices a path or opening
in the hedge, leading to right or left, and he stands, looking at the
undiscovered. After that he stops at all the openings in the hedge; one
day, with a beating heart, he tries one.

And this is where the fun begins.

Out of ten of him that try the narrow path, nine of him come back to
the broad road, and, when they pass the next gap in the hedge, they say:
"No, no, my friend, I found you pleasant for a while, but after that-ah!
after that! The way my fathers went is good enough for me, and it is
obviously the proper one; for nine of me came back, and that poor silly
te