The Project Gutenberg eBook, Brother Copas, by Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

Title: Brother Copas

Author: Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

Release Date: April 3, 2007 [eBook #20979]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BROTHER COPAS***

BROTHER COPAS

By

ARTHUR THOMAS QUILLER-COUCH.

1911

This etext prepared from a reprint of a version published in 1911.

TO THE GENTLE READER.

In a former book of mine, Sir John Constantine, I expressed (perhaps extravagantly) my faith in my fellows and in their capacity to treat life as a noble sport. In Brother Copas I try to express something of that corellative scorn which must come sooner or later to every man who puts his faith into practice.. I have that faith still; but that:

He who would love his fellow men
Must not expect too much of them"

This is good counsel if bad rhyme. I can only hope that both the faith and the scorn are sound at the core.

For the rest, I wish to state that St. Hospital is a society which never existed. I have borrowed for it certain features from the Hospital of St. Cross, near Winchester. I have invented a few external and all the internal ones. My "College of Noble Poverty" harbours abuses from which, I dare to say, that nobler institution is entirely free. St Hospital has no existence at all outside of my imagining.

ARTHUR QUILLER-COUCH.

The Haven, Fowey.
February 16th, 1911.