Page:The Message and Ministrations of Dewan Bahadur R. Venkata Ratnam, volume 1.djvu/10

 Even so is it, forsooth, with the interior life and experience of him whose Diamond Jubilee is thus sought to be commemorated through the publication of a few fragmentary notes of the ‘soft pipe’ that has ‘played on' these several years, if only in quiet nooks and unnoticed corners. Even of the ‘ditties of no tone’ piped all along ‘to the spirit’—and never once ‘to the sensual ear’—it must remain a matter for intense regret that by far the bulk have blown forth entirely unrecorded. Altogether, in original production itself, the written word has been all too limited, as compared with the spoken.

Of the contents of this volume, only the first five under the section, “Addresses and Articles,” belong to the former category. The rest, one and all, represent purely spontaneous and extempore utterances caught up and committed to paper with the inevitable imperfections of the amateur ‘long-hand’ (!) report in the course of an uncommonly rapid flow. For these invaluable love-labours of the ‘recording’ hand, no end of praise is due, as regards this volume, to Messrs.