selected for him, and that he can enjoy it without fatigue in any
place and at any time.

The truth seems to be that the human brain abhors the complexity--the
apparently aimless complexity--of nature and real life, and is for
ever trying to get away from it by selecting this and ignoring that.
And it contrives so well that I suppose the average man is not
consciously aware twice a year of that conglomerate of details which
the critics call real life. He holds one stout thread, at any rate, to
guide him through the maze--the thread of self-interest.

The justification of the poet or the novelist is that he discovers a
better thread. He follows up a universal where the average man follows
only a particular. But in following it, he does but use those
processes by which the average man arrives, or attempts to arrive, at
pleasure.




EXTERNALS


Nov. 18, 1893. Story and Anecdote.

I suppose I am no more favored than most people who write stories in
receiving from unknown correspondents a variety of suggestions,
outlines of plots, sketches of situations, characters, and so forth.
One cannot but feel grateful for all this spontaneous beneficence. The
mischief is that in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred (the fraction