About: So Runs the World by Henryk Sienkiewicz,

SO RUNS THE WORLD

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SO RUNS THE WORLD

BY HENRYK SIENKIEWICZ

AUTHOR OF"QUO VADIS," ETC.

Translated byS.C.deSOISSONS

Contents

HENRYK SIENKIEWICZ

ZOLA

WHOSE FAULT?

THE VERDICT

WIN OR LOSE

PART FIRST

HENRYK SIENKIEWICZ.

I once read a short story, in which a Slav author had all the liliesand bells in a forest bending toward each other, whispering andresounding softly the words: "Glory! Glory! Glory!" until the wholeforest and then the whole world repeated the song of flowers.

Such is to day the fate of the author of the powerful historicaltrilogy: "With Fire and Sword," "The Deluge" and "Pan Michael,"preceded by short stories, "Lillian Morris," "Yanko the Musician,""After Bread," "Hania," "Let Us Follow Him," followed by two problemnovels, "Without Dogma," and "Children of the Soil," and crowned by amasterpiece of an incomparable artistic beauty, "Quo Vadis." Elevengood books adopted from the Polish language and set into circulationare of great importance for the English reading people just now I amemphasizing only this because these books are written in the mostbeautiful language ever written by any Polish author! Eleven books ofmasterly, personal, and simple prose! Eleven good books given tothe circulation and received not only with admiration but withgratitude books where there are more or less good or sincere pages,but where there is not one on which original humor, nobleness, charm,some comforting thoughts, some elevated sentiments do not shine. Someother author would perhaps have stopped after producing "Quo Vadis,"without any doubt the best of Sienkiewicz's books.

But Sienkiewiczlooks into the future and cares more about works which he is going towrite, than about those which we have already in our libraries, and herenews his talents, searching, perhaps unknowingly, for new themes andtendencies.

When one knows how to read a book, then from its pages the author'sface looks out on him, a face not material, but just the same full oflife. Sienkiewicz's face, looking on us from his books, is not alwaysthe same; it changes, and in his last book ("Quo Vadis") it is quitedifferent, almost new.

There are some people who throw down a book after having read it, asone leaves a bottle after having drank the wine from it. There areothers who read books with a pencil in their hands, and they markthe most striking passages. Afterward, in the hours of rest, in themoments when one needs a stimulant from within and one searches forharmony, sympathy of a thing apparently so dead and strange as a bookis, they come back to the marked passages, to their own thoughts,more comprehensible since an author expressed them; to their ownsentiments, stronger and more natural since they found them insomebody else's words.

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