Project Gutenberg's Villa Rubein and Other Stories, by John Galsworthy

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Title: Villa Rubein and Other Stories

Author: John Galsworthy

Release Date: June 14, 2006 [EBook #2639]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VILLA RUBEIN AND OTHER STORIES ***

Produced by David Widger

VILLA RUBEIN AND OTHER STORIES

By John Galsworthy

_[ED. NOTE: Spelling conforms to the original: "s's" instead of our
"z's"; and "c's" where we would have "s's"; and "...our" as in colour
and flavour; many interesting double consonants; etc.]_

Contents:
Villa Rubein
A Man of Devon
A Knight
Salvation of a Forsyte
The Silence

VILLA RUBEIN

PREFACE

Writing not long ago to my oldest literary friend, I expressed in a
moment of heedless sentiment the wish that we might have again one of
our talks of long-past days, over the purposes and methods of our art.
And my friend, wiser than I, as he has always been, replied with this
doubting phrase "Could we recapture the zest of that old time?"

I would not like to believe that our faith in the value of imaginative
art has diminished, that we think it less worth while to struggle for
glimpses of truth and for the words which may pass them on to other
eyes; or that we can no longer discern the star we tried to follow; but
I do fear, with him, that half a lifetime of endeavour has dulled the
exuberance which kept one up till morning discussing the ways and means
of aesthetic achievement. We have discovered, perhaps with a certain
finality, that by no talk can a writer add a cubit to his stature, or
change the temperament which moulds and colours the vision of life he
sets before the few who will pause to look at it. And so--the rest is
silence, and what of work we may still do will be done in that dogged
muteness which is the lot of advancing years.

Other times, other men and modes, but not other truth. Truth, though
essentially relative, like Einstein's theory, will never lose its
ever-new and unique quality-perfect proportion; for Truth, to the human
consciousness at least, is but that vitally just relation of part to
whol