The Project Gutenberg eBook, A Poor Man's House, by Stephen Sydney Reynolds

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Title: A Poor Man's House

Author: Stephen Sydney Reynolds

Release Date: July 25, 2008 [eBook #26126]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

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A POOR MAN'S HOUSE

by

STEPHEN REYNOLDS

"_We understand the artificial better
than the natural. More soul, but less
talent, is contained in the simple than
in the complex._"--NOVALIS.

London: John Lane The Bodley Head
New York: John Lane Compy. MCMIX
All rights reserved

Turnbull and Spears, Printers, Edinburgh

TO
BOB
AND TO
EDWARD GARNETT

A few chapters, chosen from the completed work, have appeared in the
_Albany Review_, the _Daily News_ and _Country Life_. To the editors
of those periodicals the author's acknowledgments are due.

_PREFACE_

The substance of "A Poor Man's House" was first recorded in a journal,
kept for purposes of fiction, and in letters to one of the friends to
whom the book is dedicated. Fiction, however, showed itself an
inappropriate medium. I was unwilling to cut about the material, to
modify the characters, in order to meet the exigencies of plot, form,
and so on. I felt that the life and the people were so much better than
anything I could invent. Besides which, I found myself in possession of
conclusions, hot for expression, which could not be incorporated at all
into fiction. "A Poor Man's House" consists then of the journal and
letters, subjected to such slight re-arrangement as should enable me to
draw the truest picture I could within the limits of one volume.

Primarily the book aims at presenting a picture of a typical poor man's
house and life. Incidentally, certain conclusions are expressed
which--needless to say--are very tentative and are founded not alone on
_this_ poor man's house. Of the book as a picture, it is not the
author's place to speak. But its opinions, and the manner of arriving
at them, do require some explanatio