Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1891-03-05

and courtlers Ike 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
ourdened as they are with the require
ments of an artificial society and per-
tunctory courtesy. The millionaire,
Dutworn 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 a gratifed ambition may have
cost too much.
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 loftiest 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"
said Napoleon, land 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 go
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 Il cir filthy
novels and noisome tenements? What
sympathy, what tie of human brother
hood, what sense of fellowship exists be-
tween the cultivated and comfortable
few and the benighted millions of the
hopeless poor?
We cannot paint picture with mere
statistics. What signifies a unit more
or less in the grand total of human de-
pravity and misery? We must knock at
the doors of poverty and sin; we must
look into the eyes of the suffering and
lift the burdens of the heavy laden be-
fore we can really know the worst of
what is called low life. Well, in our
day the literature of imagination has es-
sayed that sad task.
The novelist goes now where none but
the doctor and the most jealous philan-
thropist have ever gone before upon a
mission Of charity. So far as he dares
he paints the picture of that under world
to the life He is not SO humorous as
Dickens or so satirical as Thackeray, but
he tries to be severely accurate in the
delineation of every detail, and he brings
to his work the artists eye and the sur
geon's nerve. He does not need to write
the moral down in plain black and white
AS the sightless eyes of the blind and
the MANNED limbs of the cripple tell
their own story and make mute appeal
to every generous heart, the squalid sur
roundings and sordid struggles he de-
picts speak loud words of warning and
command.-New Orleans Picayune.