Such stories are like stings; brief, but purely painful.
And doubtless they bore some resemblance to some lives lived
under our successful scientific civilization; lives which tend
in any case to be painful, and in many cases to be brief.
But when the artistic people passed beyond the poignant anecdote
and began to write long books full of poignancy, then the reading
public began to rebel and to demand the recall of romance. The long
books about the black poverty of cities became quite insupportable.
The Berkshire tragedy had a chorus; but the London tragedy has no chorus.
Therefore people welcomed the return of adventurous novels about alien
places and times, the trenchant and swordlike stories of Stevenson.
But I am not narrowly on the side of the romantics. I think that
glimpses of the gloom of our civilization ought to be recorded.
I think that the bewilderments of the solitary and sceptical soul ought
to be preserved, if it be only for the pity (yes, and the admiration)
of a happier time. But I wish that there were some way in
which the chorus could enter. I wish that at the end of each
chapter of stiff agony or insane terror the choir of humanity
could come in with a crash of music and tell both the reader
and the author that this is not the whole of human experience.
Let them go on recording hard scenes or hideous questions, but let
there be a jolly refrain.
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