The author has tried to give some history of that uphill road,
traversing the rough back country, through which men of power came
once into the main highways, dusty, timid, foot-sore, and curiously
old-fashioned. Now is the up grade eased by scholarships; young
men labour with the football instead of the buck-saw, and wear high
collars, and travel on a Pullman car, and dally with slang and
cigarettes in the smoking-room. Altogether it is a new Republic,
and only those unborn shall know if it be greater.
The man of learning and odd character and humble life was quite
familiar once, and not only in Hillsborough. Often he was born out
of time, loving ideals of history and too severe with realities
around him. In Darrel it is sought to portray a force held in
fetters and covered with obscurity, yet strong to make its way and
widely felt. His troubles granted, one may easily concede his
character, and his troubles are, mainly, no fanciful invention.
There is good warrant for them in the court record of a certain
case, together with the inference of a great lawyer who lived a
time in its odd mystery. The author, it should be added, has given
success to a life that ended in failure. He cares not if that
success be unusual should any one be moved to think it within his
reach.
A man of rugged virtues and good fame once said: "The forces that
have made me? Well, first my mother, second my poverty, third
Felix Holt. That masterful son of George Eliot became an ideal of
my youth, and unconsciously I began to live his life."
It is well that the boy in the book was nobler than any who lived
in Treby Magna.
As to "the men of the dark," they have long afflicted a man living
and well known to the author of this tale, who now commits it to
the world hoping only that these poor children of his brain may
deserve kindness if not approval.
NEW YORK CITY,
March, 1903.