Idaho semi-weekly world. [volume] (Idaho City, Idaho Territory) 1875-1908, 1891-03-27
TRAINING HE EXCAVATION.
How the Novel Brings Different Classe,
of Society Into Sympathy.

How the Novel Brings Different Glasses
of Society Into Sympathy.
There is something pathetic, not who'll
ly sad, in the thought Of the poor boy or
girl who finds delight in fictitious annals
in high life. Boy and girl put them
selves respectively in the place of hero
and heroine. They are richly dressed,
and in marble halls they taste the sweets
Of elegant leisure, of power and praise.
Nothing is either good or bad but
thinking makes it so" and imagination
has no cage. Poverty is beguiled of its
sting, toll is hghtened and ennui gives |
way to round Of noble pleasures and |
tsatnatic scenes, until the curtain falls |
upon baffied villainy and triumphant |
virtue
Those hum BILE readers are not troubled
by the doubts and cavilings Of the ex-
acting realist. They are happy in that
they can take SO much for granted. II
they have not had the real thing they
think SO, and SO far as they are con
cerned is it not all the same? But high
life would know low life, too. Scholars
and courtiers like Virgil and Horace
were in love with pastoral scenes and
rustic pleasures. Marie Antoinette
would be a dairy maid, and her royal
husband would be locksmith.
In her palatial home the proud beauty
grows weary Of the rolling hours, over
burdened as they are with the require
ments of an artificial society and per
functory courtesy. The millionaire
outworn with the care of his wealth
looks longingly back to the simple labors
and untroubled sleep of his youth. The
statesman, weighed down with response
bility and beset by importunate suitors
for favor and influence, has pensive, re-
gretful moments in which he reflects
that even gratified ambition may have
| cost too much.
Imagination brings surcease of repin-
| ing, temporarily at least, to all Of these
exalted personages. The democratic
novel, the romance of low and of com
mon life, puts the great in touch with
the masses of their kind, and makes sym
pathy possible between the Hottest and
the lowliest station.
We live in many and different worlds
in reality; we meet and mingle with
each other in imagination. When we
speak of civilization, of enlightened So
ciety, of progress, we have in mind a
comparatively small part of the human
race. Scratch the skin of Russian, 8
said Napoleon, ''and you will find a
Tartar"
But how much of our civilization is
more than skin deep? In the great cities
of Europe and America do we not find a
barbarous population just beyond the
purlieus of wealth and fashion, which
only the fear of the constable keeps in
check? Is ignorance more dense or vice
more shameless in any quarter of Picking
or Hankow than in the slums of New
York and London? Do we need to &C
upon long journeys or to turn back the
pages of history to find the lowest depths
of human degradation? But what do We
know of those people in their filthy
novels and noisome tenements? Wha
sympathy, what tie Of human brother
hood, what sense of fellowship exists be
tween the cultivated and comfortabl
few and the benighted millions of tn
hopeless poor?
We cannot paint. a picture with mer
statistics. What signifies a unit NOR
or less in the grand total of human de
pravity and misery? We must knock a
the doors of poverty and sin; we mus
look into the eyes of the suffering an
lift the burdens of the heavy laden be
, fore we can really know the worst @
what is called low life. Well, in GU
, day the literature of imagination has es
sayed that sad task.
The novelist goes now where none bu
, the doctor and the most Jealous philaI
thropist have ever gone before upon
) mission of charity. So far as he dare
he paints the picture of that under worl
to the life. He is not so humorous 1
Dickens or SO satirical as Thackeray, BIT
l he tries to be severely accurate in til
delineation of every detail, and he bring
to his work the artists eye and the su
= geon's nerve. He does not need to writ
: the moral down in plain black and whit
4 AS the sightless eyes of the blind an
: the MANNED limbs of the cripple te
5 their own story and make a mute appe
= to every generous heart, the squalid su
5 roundings and sorlid struggles he i
picts speak loud words of warning ar
: command. New Orleans Picay0ne.