The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Far Country, Book 1, by Winston Churchill

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Title: A Far Country, Book 1

Author: Winston Churchill

Release Date: October 17, 2004 [EBook #3736]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A FAR COUNTRY, BOOK 1 ***

Produced by Pat Castevans and David Widger

A FAR COUNTRY

By Winston Churchill

BOOK 1.

I.

My name is Hugh Paret. I was a corporation lawyer, but by no means a
typical one, the choice of my profession being merely incidental, and
due, as will be seen, to the accident of environment. The book I am about
to write might aptly be called The Autobiography of a Romanticist. In
that sense, if in no other, I have been a typical American, regarding my
country as the happy hunting-ground of enlightened self-interest, as a
function of my desires. Whether or not I have completely got rid of this
romantic virus I must leave to those the aim of whose existence is to
eradicate it from our literature and our life. A somewhat Augean task!

I have been impelled therefore to make an attempt at setting forth, with
what frankness and sincerity I may, with those powers of selection of
which I am capable, the life I have lived in this modern America; the
passions I have known, the evils I have done. I endeavour to write a
biography of the inner life; but in order to do this I shall have to
relate those causal experiences of the outer existence that take place in
the world of space and time, in the four walls of the home, in the school
and university, in the noisy streets, in the realm of business and
politics. I shall try to set down, impartially, the motives that have
impelled my actions, to reveal in some degree the amazing mixture of good
and evil which has made me what I am to-day: to avoid the tricks of
memory and resist the inherent desire to present myself other and better
than I am. Your American romanticist is a sentimental spoiled child who
believes in miracles, whose needs are mostly baubles, whose desires are
dreams. Expediency is his motto. Innocent of a knowledge of the
principles of the universe, he lives in a state of ceaseless activity,
admitting