The times. [volume] (Richmond, Va.) 1890-1903, 1893-12-17


n ~ seen. This is true for the non-readine
practical public.
e The higher educationists, that make
| pleasure. entertainment, and pride the
business OF their minds and sensibilitIes
! and truth, kind Of general stage-light;
these make a paradise or limbo. known
as the literary world.
The inhabitants Of this sphere are large
| ly fictitious characters-founded on fact
TO great extent made up Of human ma
terial. but made. adjusted. moulded, and
! finished after the mind Of the authorize
please his masters. the reading. book-buy-
Ing public,-to supply the trade.
Sometime ago. Harper had burlesque
picture OF "Toy-Town." that was very
amusing, and quite instructive. The
houses. the trees. the men, and women,
the horses and sheep. were all cheap
German make. "Toy-Town" was a pic
ture Of thoroughly artistic and fiction
furnished mind. The greatest writer OF
fiction that has ever lived. has been I'M
equal TO the full presentation Of a human
soul, with ali its wonders and mysteries,
and honor and baseness, its bewildering
contradictions And the mind that is
furnished with it, men and women from
fiction, lives I'm "Toy-Town;" passes an
unreal life, and is not so very much I'M
like the char which the wind bloweth
away from the face Of the earth his
mind is all papered over
Don Quixote is the worlds picture Of
that sort Of mind. His was an extreme
case. But the word is fun OF Don Quix-
otes. varying in degree, coloring, and fla
vor. And these are not only the product |
Of excessive noyel-reading but the plain
est mountaineering person has often as |
positively fictitious. unnatural world OF |
his own. as the most imaginative and !
aesthetic sentimentalist. An amiabe old /
gentleman heroabout, not long since de-
parted, was said to have regarded those
ne met and his customers. outside Of his
church. as poor devils on their way 10
the lower regions. Childe Harold's. Ham
let's and Lord Byrons used TO be very
common generalities. How they did look
dardy and scowl on the "profanum vul-
gus!" And what a world they did occu-
py!
A good pair Of honest spectacles, or, as
the Scriptures have it. "A single eye" is
a wonderful luxury and gift of Cod
one of the unluckiest cases OF fiction is
the man that, without any reading or
h gh conception, somehow or other gets
a notion Of his own speciality, and peoples
the world with good fellows not after any
a true measure, but merely af-
ter passing notions and common things
that suit his likes or dislikes. his afiini-
ties or aversons, his sense or his folly, |
his better parts or his vices. These com
Dragging. horse-sense fellows
are all occupied with an inner, shadowy,
ideal, which is, in fact, their
own admirable selves,-which fills their
minds They are hustlers: they directly
and indirectly blow and puff their swell
ling selves and fiji the public or private
stage on which they show. These are Of
the Gobbler order and are Don Quixotes
after a common style.
This peopling of the mind with fancy
beau ideals, homemade or shop goods, is
IN extremely dangerous thing. There is
many a man and woman that makes up
this fiction, gets familiar with it, falls
In love with it, and presently fits ,
It on to some object of their af-
rections. But, alas! They have fooled
themselves 10 death. they have been
taught in their own trap; they have been
enticed with a bait gotten out Of novels ,
Or a lively imagination, and then the ]
player hero has to be seen by daylight
The old charge against sinners was. Z
hat their bosoms were full Of idols. And r
he great folly of mankind now is Of iden- J
icaly the same style-hcads and hearts =
ull Of absurd ideals and ignes fatui and n
id notions that we swear by The ex- a
ortation Of the prophet is good and wise
ow: Remove thine idols from thy heart
nd the stumbling blocks Of thine iniqul- J..
y from thee"