PREFACE
“Dost thou feel the soil of thy soul stirred by tender thoughts? Disturb it not with speech but let it work in quietness and secrecy.”
Thesefew stories of Michael Wood are here reprinted with the consent but not at the suggestion of the author. To those who understand, the appeal is diverse but unmistakable; the delicate description of our Mother Earth, the sense of the invisible, the value of the things that count, the scorn of a good deal that is conventional, ordinary, and admitted, are here writ plain for those, who, in the French phrase, have the seeing ear and the hearing eye. At a time when much that is ingrained in us is thrown into a crucible of fire, and elemental doubts and certainties have taken its place, such attempts to pierce through veils may be welcomed, and with a little book a little appeal is made.
If justification were further needed it is twofold. First, the stories do not by any means stand alone; and half a dozen names might be quoted of writers who, to-day, in the short story, persistently turn aside to listen to the obstinate questionings which will not, for all our din, be stilled; but secondly, the Editor, to whom the privilege of collecting these stories has been entrusted, has had for some time the rare experience of trying them with the living voice on audiences large and small. The response has never in any case been doubtful, though it might be difficult or impertinent to analyse such a lifting of conventional veils. Partly in the hope of passing on an experience like this, and partly with the wish that Michael Wood’s other published work might be more widely known, the Editor commends to other story-tellers these diamonds from a mystic mine.
Thanks are given to the Manager of theTheosophical Reviewfor permission to reprint the stories in this volume.
September 1915.