now luminous, surrounds them. From somewhere sound accents of an
authority not sufficiently explained by the mere accuracy of his
versions of life. Though it may indeed be difficult for a thinker of the
widest views to contract himself to the dimensions needed for
naturalistic art, and though he may often fail when he attempts it, when
he does succeed he has the opportunity, which the mere worldling lacks,
of ennobling his art with some of the great light of the poets.




CHAPTER III

ART


1. BOOTH TARKINGTON

Booth Tarkington is the glass of adolescence and the mold of Indiana.
The hero of his earliest novel, Harkless in _The Gentleman from
Indiana_, drifts through that narrative with a melancholy stride because
he has been seven long years out of college and has not yet set the
prairie on fire. But Mr. Tarkington, at the time of writing distant from
Princeton by about the same number of years and also not yet famous,
could not put up with failure in a hero. So Harkless appears as a mine
of latent splendors. Carlow County idolizes him, evil-doers hate him,
grateful old men worship him, devoted young men shadow his unsuspecting
steps at night in order to protect him from the villains of
Six-Cross-Roads, sweet girls adore him, fortune saves him from dire
adventures, and in the end his fellow-voters choose him to represent