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The Torrents of Spring



The Torrents of Spring

A Romantic Novel in Honor of the
Passing of a Great Race

by
Ernest Hemingway

1926

PART ONE

Red and Black Laughter
The only source of the true Ridiculous (as it appears to me) is affectation.
HENRY FIELDING


PART TWO

The Struggle for Life
And here I solemnly protest I have no intention to vilify or asperse any one; for though everything is copied from the book of nature, and scarce a character or action produced which I have not taken from my own observations or experience; yet I have used the utmost care to obscure the persons by such different circumstances, degrees, and colors, that it will be impossible to guess at them with any degree of certainty; and if it ever happens otherwise, it is only where the failure characterized is so minute, that it is a foible only which the party himself may laugh at as well as any other.
HENRY FIELDING

PART THREE

Men in War and the Death of Society
It may be likewise noted that affectation does not imply an absolute negation of those qualities which are affected; and therefore, though, when it proceeds from hypocrisy, it be nearly allied to deceit; yet when it comes from vanity only, it partakes of the nature of ostentation: for instance, the affectation of liberality in a vain man differs visibly from the same affectation in the avaricious, for though the vain man is not what he would appear, or hath not the virtue he affects, to the degree he would be thought to have it; yet it sits less awkwardly on him than on the avaricious man, who is the very reverse of what he would seem to be.
HENRY FIELDING

PART FOUR

The Passing of a Great Race and the Making and Marring of Americans
But perhaps it may be objected to me, that I have against my own rules introduced vices, and of a very black kind, into this work. To which I shall answer: first, that it is very difficult to pursue a series of human actions, and keep clear from them. Secondly, that the vices to be found here are rather the accidental consequences of some human frailty or foible, than causes habitually existing in the mind. Thirdly, that they are never set forth as the objects of ridicule, but detestation. Fourthly, that they are never the principle figure at that time on the scene: and lastly, they never produce the intended evil.
HENRY FIELDING


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