r the other the hardest names that it can think of:
Philistines, Bourgeois, Mrs. Grundy, Rebels, Anarchists, and
Ne'er-do-weels. So we go on! And so, as each of us is born to go his
journey, he finds himself in time ranged on one side or on the other,
and joins the choruses of name-slingers.

But now and then--ah! very seldom--we find ourselves so near that thing
which has no breadth, the middle line, that we can watch them both, and
positively smile to see the fun.

When this book was published first, many of its critics found that
Shelton was the only Pharisee, and a most unsatisfactory young man--and
so, no doubt, he is. Belonging to the comfortable ninety, they felt, in
fact, the need of slinging names at one who obviously was of the ten.
Others of its critics, belonging to the ten, wielded their epithets upon
Antonia, and the serried ranks behind her, and called them Pharisees; as
dull as ditch-water--and so, I fear, they are.

One of the greatest charms of authorship is the privilege it gives
the author of studying the secret springs of many unseen persons,
of analysing human nature through the criticism that his work
evokes--criticism welling out of the instinctive likings or aversions,
out of the very fibre of the human being who delivers it; criticism that
often seems to leap out against the critic's will, startled like a fawn
from some deep bed, of sympathy or of antipathy. And so, all authors
love to be abused--as any man can see.

In the little matter of the title of this book, we are all Pharisees,
whether of the ninety or the ten, and we certainly do live upon an
Island. JOHN GALSWORTHY.

January 1, 1908

PART I

THE TOWN

CHAPTER I

SOCIETY

A quiet, well-dressed man named Shelton, with a brown face and a short,
fair beard, stood by the bookstall at Dover Station. He was about
to journey up to London, and had placed his bag in the corner of a
third-class carriage.

After his long travel, the flat-vowelled voice of the bookstall clerk
offering the latest novel sounded pleasant--pleasant the independent
answers of a bearded guard, and the stodgy farewell sayings of a man and
wife. The limber porters trundling their barrows, the greyness of the
station and the good stolid humour clinging to the people, air, and
voices, all brought to him the sense of home. Meanwhile he wavered
between purchasing a book called Market Hayborough, which he had
read and would certainly enjoy a second