Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: II I Must have been about twelve years of age when I realized that I was possessed of the bard's inheritance. A momentous journey I made with my parents to Boston about this time not only stimulated this gift, but gave me the advantage — of which other travellers before me have likewise availed themselves — of being able to take certain poetic liberties with a distant land that my friends at home had never seen. Often during the heat of summer noons when we were assembled under the big maple beside the lattice fence in the Peters' yard, the spirit would move me to relate the most amazing of adventures. Our train, for instance, had been held up in the night by a band of robbers in black masks, and rescued by a traveller who bore a striking resemblance to my Cousin Robert Breck. He had shot two of the robbers. These fabrications, once started, flowed from me with ridiculous ease. I experienced an unwonted exhilaration, exaltation ; I began to believe that they had actually occurred. In vain the astute Julia asserted that there were no train robbers in the east. What had my father done? Well, he had been very brave, but he had had no pistol. Had I been frightened ? No, not at all; I, too, had wished for a pistol. Why hadn't I spoken of this before? Well, so many things had happened to me I couldn't tell them all at once. It was plain that Julia, though often fascinated against her will, deemed this sort of thing distinctly immoral. I was a boy divided in two. One part of me dwelt in a fanciful realm of his own weaving, and the other part was a commonplace and protesting inhabitant of a world of lessons, disappointments and discipline. My instincts were notvicious. Ideas bubbled up within me continually from an apparently inexhaustible spring, and the very strength of the longin...
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3.0 out of 5 stars
Oldie but Goodie,
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A Book Still Relevant Today...,
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This review is from: A far country, (Hardcover)
I purchased this book at a garage sale for 25 cents, seeing the author's name and assuming it was the "other" Churchill, who was also a novelist.
The book starts out slowly, and as a NY TIMES review of 1915 notes, the character of Hugh Paret is not fully realized in the opening chapters. And idealist with a bent toward literature, Hugh decides to go into corporate law, after being shamed by his then-girlfriend at a party for "going into business". Hugh studies secretly for the entrance exams to Harvard and to his Father's surprise, is admitted. This is where the book becomes interesting for today's reader. Hugh not only becomes a successful corporate lawyer, but also goes to work for some of the most odious city bosses, trusts, and robber barons of turn-of-the-century America. Churchill describes in detail how projects are pushed through the legislature by "fixers" and how the public is deceived by the politicians, who use divisive issues to distract the general public from what is really going on. 100 years later, not much has changed, it seems. What makes the narrative compelling is that we see these things from Hugh's perspective - and the self-justifications he uses to rationalize his actions, which benefit only the wealthy and well-off at the expense of the ordinary citizen. His nemesis, Krebs,the poor son of a German immigrant, is a labor organizer, assemblyman, and public interest lawyer, acts as a neat foil to Hugh's ambitions. The novel pits the emerging capitalist class of the late 1800s against the nascent worker's movements of the times. The title is from the biblical parable of the prodigal son, who "took his journey into a far country". Will Hugh Parent find his way back from the "far country" and realize his true calling in life? Is there more to life than being successful - at all costs? It is an interesting tale that is still relevant today. The writing style may seem a bit ornate by today' standards, and the first few chapters (and the illustrations) may lead one to believe this is yet another Victorian-era drawing-room drama. But make no mistake, it is a novel with political implications, probably somewhat radical for its era.
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