GEORGE W. JACOBS & CO.
PUBLISHERS
1907
[All rights reserved.]
AUTHOR’S PREFACE
The object of a novel is, as a general rule, to reflect life and temperament in a selected environment. For various reasons it has become the fashion to achieve this end by indirect means. An author goes to Italy, and writes a book about Italy. He tells us the things about Italy, and the people of Italy, that we want to know; but in order to discover these things we have to read many pages dealing with imaginary persons, for whose adventures we may or may not care, and in whose personality we may or may not believe.
The present work is merely an attempt, and an obviously imperfect one, to do directly what the travelled and cosmopolitan novelist does in an indirect way. That is to say, it is an attempt to mirror in some fashion the social life, the literary life, the individual life, the present-day life, of a developing continent and four millions of people.
The author is aware that books of this kind are usually written by travellers of more or less distinction. He knows that it is the easiest thing possible for your up-to-date journalist to rush across to Japan or Siberia and to be back in six months with the MSS. of a book that will exhaust the subject. He knows this; and he is bound to admit that he may be lacking in that breezy and picturesque point of view which follows naturally on an acquaintance of ten weeks, but is liable to vanish with a knowledge of ten years.
Yet he does not apologise; certainly not for the subject matter, nor yet for the fact that he writes about Australia as a resident Australian. The living world should be at least as worthy of interpretation as the dead world, or the world that existed only in some writer’s brain. What he does apologise for is the treatment, should that prove altogether inadequate to the theme.
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