Men can confess to a
book what they cannot confess to a friend. Why should it be
necessary to veil this essence of humanity in the dreary melodrama,
the trite incident of a novel or a play? Things in life do not
happen as they happen in novels or plays. Oliver Twist, in real
life, does not get accidentally adopted by his grandfather's oldest
friend, and commit his sole burglary in the house of his aunt. We
do not want life to be transplanted into trim garden-plots; we want
to see it at home, as it grows in all its native wildness, on the
one hand; and to know the idea, the theory, the principle that
underlie it on the other. How few of us there are who MAKE our
lives into anything! We accept our limitations, we drift with them,
while we indignantly assert the freedom of the will. The best
sermon in the world is to hear of one who has struggled with life,
bent or trained it to his will, plucked or rejected its fruit, but
all upon some principle. It matters little what we do; it matters
enormously how we do it. Considering how much has been said, and
sung, and written, and recorded, and prated, and imagined, it is
strange to think how little is ever told us directly about life; we
see it in glimpses and flashes, through half-open doors, or as one
sees it from a train gliding into a great town, and looks into back
windows and yards sheltered from the street.
Pages:
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147