means let us have truth in our novels, but there is truth and truth.
Most of New York's firemen presumably sat down at noon to-day to a
dinner of corned-beef and cabbage. But perhaps one of them at the same
moment was fighting his way through smoke and flame, to save life at the
risk of his own. Boiled dinner and burned firemen are equally true. Are
they equally worthy of description? What would the age of chivalry be,
if the chronicles had recorded only the brutality, filthiness and
coarseness of their contemporaries? The wearing of underclothing
unwashed till it fell to pieces; the utter lack of soap; the eating with
fingers; the drunkenness and foul-mouthedness that drove women from the
table at a certain point, and so inaugurated the custom, now continued
merely as an excuse for a cigar? Some one said once that a man finds in
a great city just the qualities he takes to it. That's true of romance
as well. Modern novelists don't find beauty and nobility in life,
because they don't look for them. They predicate from their inner souls
that the world is 'cheap and nasty' and that is what they find it to be.
There is more true romance in a New York tenement than there ever was in
a baron's tower--braver battles, truer love, nobler sacrifices. Romance
is all about us, but we must have eyes for it. You are young people,
with your lives before you. Let me give you a little advice. As you go
through life look for the fine things--not for the despicable. It won't
make you any richer. It won't make you famous. It won't better you in a
worldly way. But it will make your lives happier, for by the time you
are my age, you'll love humanity, and look upon the world and call it
good. And you will have found romance enough to satisfy all longings for
mediæval times."

"But, dear, one cannot imagine some people ever finding anything
romantic in life," said a voice, which, had it been translated into
words would have said, "I know you are right, of course, and you will