The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1893-07-15
THE HEROES OF ROMANCE
They Are Seldom Taken from tho
Middle Classes.
Strictly Speaking, There Are But TIVE
Normal Heroes of Fiction, and They
Arc the Warrior and the
Fairy Prince.

It is lamentable, indeed, when You
come to reflect on it, how large pro-
portion of useful and respectable call
ingS falls under the ban of romance.
What poet or romancer ever made his
first lover, for example, a balif or a
beadle? Yet bailitfs and beadles are
men and brothers. They may do their
oftentimes dangerous duty with the
dash of Rupert, or the cool courage
of Cromwell, says Macmillans Maga-
zine. yet they are frankly impossible
as heroes of romance. De Quincy
makes a remark somewhere to the eff
feet that one would not be inclined to
think highly of man who, in the abb
sence of predisposing circumstances,
deliberately and for the love of the
business decided to be butcher. Yet
butchers are husbands and fathers,
and have blood in their veins as well
as on their aprons. AS matter of
statistics, believe hardly day passes
but some solicitor falls in love; yet no
court of love or literature will give
him audience as lover. nor take cog
nizance of his pleadings. The breast
of the stockbroker is swayed by the
bears and bulls of passion no less than
by the subtler influences of financial
speculation. Yet his name is not hon.
ored in the more than royal exchange
of romance. Then, with one stroke of
the pen, romance rules out the whole
amorous mob of retail traders. They
are not altogether absent from the
pages of romance, these worthy citi-
zens. Only they have to forego the
heroic parts and put up with being
Supernumeraries or villains Or comic
characters. About the, butcher l am
doubtful. Not even Dickens, think,
found room for butcher amid his
Babylon of trades. Nor with Shakes
peare is it any better. Ounce the car
penter, Snug the joiner. Bottom the
weaver, Flute the bellows-mender,
Shout the tinker, and Stafveling the
tailor. are very we'll to play the fool,
to divert the duke and ladies, but none
of them, not even Bottom translated,
is fit object for a lady's love. As the
democratic Whitman has complained,
in Shakespearean play the mass of
industrious citizens is just mob to
throw up its sweaty night-caps in some
Caesars honor at the bidding of an An
tony. What is there about trade
thus to incapacitate a man for ro-
nance?
Strictly speaking there are but two
normal heroes of romance, the warrior
and the fairy prince. If there is no
fairy prince at hand, an ordinary prince
will do. The English duke is, as the
American moralist rightly enough di-
vined, only modern variety of fairy
prince. TO be mistaken for a fairy
prince the English duke no doubt needs
to be looked at from the other side Of
the Atlantic. Seen at close quarters,
in the house OF lords, on the race
course or in the law courts, he is apt to
appear fieshy. But he has the essen
IS rarity. There are but two dozen or
SO of him all told, and most of these
have been bespoken or used up. He
has besides, for the American girl, an
other of the essential secrets of ro-
mance--he Is exotic. II is the good
fortune and fascinating fashion Of tho
fairy prince 10 descend always from
some unknown upper and diyiner air.
That it is which makes the Prince
Charming of the fairy tale so irresisti-
Bile So it was that Cupid came to
Psyche, to cherish her with his secret
and invisible godhead. So Perseus
floated on winged sandals through the
welcoming air to Andromeda's feet 10
slay the monster SO Lohengrin came
flashing in a swan-drawn sl1if from
the mysterious halls of the Holy Grail.
to champion maiden innocence against
treachery and Islander. The fairy
prince, YOU see, commonly includes the
warriors part, and is doubly resistless
coming in the nick of time to fight a
distressed dansel's battles and TO siay
her dragons You may depend upon it
that what tells chiefly with the girls
against the emineptly respectable race
OF bankers and brewers and doctors
and lawyers IS their appalling common
ness, their frequency. mean, and ia
nailiarness- What should there be in
one brass plate out of dozen in the
same street 10 throw romantic girl
off her emotional balance? When the
modern novelist would surnount the
professional high hat with the aureole
of romance, he tricks ont his tame hero
to mimic the traditional advantages
of prince Or champion.
THE SWEEPERS OF INDIA.