By the Christmas Fire

the Literature

for a few minutes, for lack of anything better to do, been paying s

agreeable. The writer was taking us on a ramble through the less frequented parts of Italy. He had a fine descriptive power, and made us see the quiet hill towns,

thanksgiving that he was not as other men, he turned to berate the other men, who in New York were, at that very moment, rushing up and down the crowded streets in the frantic haste to be rich. He treated their fault as his misfortune. Indeed, it was unfortunate that the thought of their haste should spoil the serenity of his contemplation. His fine sense for

odern." By and by the whole pack would be in full cry and the lovely solitude would be no more. Then the author wandered off through the olives, where

he is a superior person with a "temperament," or a fine thinker with a gift for righteous indignation. He is simply set down as cross. It is presumed that he got up the wrong way, and he is advised to try again and see if he cannot do better. If he is fortunate enough to be thrown into the society of his c

nny'

am g

gayety in others. At last, as a matter of self-defense, he puts on the armor of g

nted, and the printing-press is still more recent. There is still a certain Delphic mystery about the printed page which imposes upon the imagination. When we sit down with a book, it is hard to realize that we are only conversing with a fellow being who may know little more about the subject in hand than we do, and who is attempting to convey to us not onl

the disposition of our favorite writers becomes a matter of great importance to us. A surly, sour-tempered person, taking advantage of our confidence, can turn us against our best frien

rough the printed page. In having a single means of infection it follows the analogy of malaria, which in many respects it resembles. No mosquito, no malaria; so no book, no pessimism. Of course you must have a particular kind of mosquito, and he must have got the i

I have known some people who were quite illiterate who held very glo

t to all the world. The evil is narrowly localized. He sees the dark side of things because he is so unlucki

his bed against his enemy. And yet, as I have said, the half-hours spent in listening to these tirades were not cheerless, and no bad effects followed. Pat never impressed me as being inclined to misanthropy; in fact, I think he might have been set down as one who loved his fellow men, always excepting the unlucky individual who lived next to him. He never imputed the sins of this particular person to Humanity. There was always a sunny margin of good humor ar

have been quite different. Two loveless souls, living on top of a lonely mountain, with the pitiless stars shining

s sincerity, refuses to allow our attention to be distracted by the introduction of any characters unconnected w

as the scholastic theologians argued in many learned volumes, that Adam and Eve, being all that

the truth. If it is ugly, that is not his fault. He pictures to us the thing he sees, and declares that if we

presented to us, and treat that which is of necessity partial as if it were universal. When we are presented with a poor and shabby world, peopled only with sordid self-seekers, we need not be unduly depressed. We take the thing for what it is, a fragment. We are not looking directly at the world, but only at so much of it as has been mirrore

ed as gifts of the gods, but we must not expect too many of them. Even the best minds often leave no record of their happiest moments, while they become garrulous over what displeases them. The cave of Adullam has always been the most prolific literary centre. Every man who has a gri

entional lie which they want to expose. It is the same impulse which moves almost every right-minded citizen, once or twice in his li

ger of becoming the victim of his own talent. Eloquent fault-finding becomes a mannerism. The original grievance loses its sharp outlines; it, as it were, passes from the sol

er, or "sweetness and light," with all the ardor of youthful neophytes. And it was good for them. But after a while they became, if not exactly weary in well-doing, at least a little weary of the unintermittent tirades against ill-doing. They were in the plight of the good Christian who goes to church every Sunday only to hear

rk is poorly done; and it is too bad that the middle-class Englishman has a number of limita

t put a cheerful courage on as we work for better things? Even the Philistine has his good points, and

the thing as it is. There is not a single one of these characters whom we have not met. Their poor shifts at self-deceit are painfully familiar to us. In the company of this keen-eyed detective we can

never total because the shadow of the book could not quite hide

ld, and there is room in it for many embodiments of good and evil. There are all sorts of pe

imited it must be in its field. You must not expect to get a comprehensive view through a high-powered microscope. The author is severely limited, not only by his choice of a su

his has been prohibited by law. It is held that the railroad, being a common carrier, must not be put into a position in which it will be tempted to discriminate in favor of its own products. For a similar reason it may be argued that it is dangerous to allow the dramatist or novelist to furnish us with a "philosophy of life." The chances are that, instead of impartially fulfilling the duties of a common carrier, he w

han from what he reads out of a book, or from what he sees on the stage. "The harvest of a quiet eye" is, after

of this Plato would banish poets from his Republic and the Puritans would exclude novelists and play-actors from their conventicles. But it is curious to observe how the character of the

"Female Quixotism; exhibited in the Romantic Opinions and Extravagant Adventures of Dorcasina Sheldon." The work was addressed "to

heads of artless young girls to their great injury, and sometimes to their utter ruin." Her father allowed her to indulge her fancy, "never considering their dangerous tendency to a young, inexperienced female mind." The various calamities into which Miss Dorcasina Sheldon fell may be imagined by those who have not the patience to search for them upon the printed pages. Her parting words to those who had the guardianship of female minds had gre

ial state in particular. The young ladies are much more in danger of having their spirits depressed by the painstaking representation of miseries they are never likely to experience. The gloomy views of average human nature which

tted enough to think of it in time. When fiction offers us only ar

the pumpkin was the very picture of geniality. Good-will gleamed from the round eyes, and the mouth was one luminous smi

ere was something sinister in the squint of his eye, and uncanny in the way his rub

ome of your J

ed at him till I 'most got scared,

d sense. It is the way to do with Jack

g works of the imagination, though I know that their auth

ipline of life. But a book or a play has no such right to domineer over us. Our own imagination has the first rights