He is a sentimentalist in this essential sense, that he is soaked and swept away by mere associations. He has so often seen birds fly and lay eggs that he feels as if there must be some dreamy, tender connection between the two ideas, whereas there is none. In both cases there is no connection, except that one has seen them together. A sentimentalist might shed tears at the smell of apple-blossom, because, by a dark association of his own, it reminds him of his boyhood. Just as we all like love tales because there is an instinct of sex, we all like astonishing tales because they touch the nerve of the ancient instinct of astonishment.
Mere life is interesting enough.
A child of seven is excited by being told that Tommy opened a door and saw a dragon. But a child of three is excited by being told that Tommy opened a door. In fact, a baby is about the only person, I should think, to whom a modern realistic novel could read without boring him. This proves that even nursery tales only echo an almost pre-natal leap of interest an amazement. These tales say that apples were golden only to refresh the forgotten moment when we found that they were green.