If you figure this owner of the Voice as sitting, a little nervously, a little modestly, on a stage, with table, glass of water and all complete, and myself as the intrusive chairman insisting with a bland ruthlessness upon his “few words” of introduction before he recedes into the wings, and if furthermore you figure a sheet behind our friend on which moving pictures intermittently appear, and if finally you suppose his subject to be the story of the adventure of his soul among Utopian inquiries, you will be prepared for some at least of the difficulties of this unworthy but unusual work.īut over against this writer here presented, there is also another earthly person in the book, who gathers himself together into a distinct personality only after a preliminary complication with the reader. The entertainment before you is neither the set drama of the work of fiction you are accustomed to read, nor the set lecturing of the essay you are accustomed to evade, but a hybrid of these two.

Yet, ever and again, you will find him back at that little table, the manuscript in his hand, and the expansion of his ratiocinations about Utopia conscientiously resumed.

But afterwards, if the devices of this declining art of literature prevail, you will go with him through curious and interesting experiences. Him you must imagine as sitting at a table reading a manuscript about Utopias, a manuscript he holds in two hands that are just a little fat at the wrist. And his Voice (which is our medium henceforth) is an unattractive tenor that becomes at times aggressive. Occasionally his hand flies out with a fluttering gesture of illustration. He droops at times like most of us, but for the greater part he bears himself as valiantly as a sparrow. The Owner of the Voice you must figure to yourself as a whitish plump man, a little under the middle size and age, with such blue eyes as many Irishmen have, and agile in his movements and with a slight tonsorial baldness-a penny might cover it-of the crown.

You have to clear your mind of any preconceptions in that respect. Now, this Voice, and this is the peculiarity of the matter, is not to be taken as the Voice of the ostensible author who fathers these pages. Throughout these papers sounds a note, a distinctive and personal note, a note that tends at times towards stridency and all that is not, as these words are, in Italics, is in one Voice. And here, indeed, because of a very natural misunderstanding this is the only course to take. There are works, and this is one of them, that are best begun with a portrait of the author. Previous Chapter Next Chapter The Owner of the Voice

Wells a modern utopia