Mineral Point tribune. (Mineral Point, Wis.) 1869-1938, 1891-03-14

va r,lvzaut ruIsurr, or power ana 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 lightened and ennui gives
way to round Of noble pleasures and
dramatic scenes, until the curtain falls
upon bafiled villainy and triumphant
virtue.
Those humble readers are not troubled
by the doubts and caviIings 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
ana cOuruers ike virgin and Horace
were in love with pastoral scenes and
rustic pleasures. Marie Antoinette
would be a dairy maid, and her royal
husband would be locksnith.
In her paiatial 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-
tunctory courtesy, The millionaire,
outworn with the care of his wealth,
looks longingly back to the simple labors
and uutroubled sleep Of his youth. The
statesman, weighed down with response
bility and beset by importunate suitors
for favor aud influence, has peusiye, re-
gretful moments in which he reflects
that even a gratifed ambition may have
cost toe .auCh
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 loftiest and
the lowiest 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, 4"
said Napoleon, land You viii find a
Tartar"
more than skin deep? In the great cities
of Europe and America l. we not find a
barbarous population just beyond the
purHeus Of wealth and fashion, which
only the fear of the constable keeps in
check? Is ignorance more dense or vice
more shaTeless in any quarter Of Picking
or HaukOw than in the slums of New
York and London? Do we need to 60
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 tenements2 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 a picture with mere
statistics What signifies a unit more
or less in the grand total of human de-
pravity and misery? We must knocl; 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 Wen, in our
day the literature of Imagination has es-
sayed that sad task.
The novelist goes now where none but
tie doctor and the most jealous philan-
thropist have ever gone before upon a
mission of charity. SO far as he dares
he paiats 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 lac brings
70 his work the artistic eye and the sur
geou'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
roundiugs and sordid struggles he de
picts speak loud words of warning and
command. New Orleans Picavune.