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Novel Notes by Jerome K. (Jerome Klapka) Jerome
page 58 of 252 (23%)
speaking in that soothingly melancholy tone of voice that he never
varies, whether telling a joke about a wedding or an anecdote relating to
a funeral, "not altogether bad. Bad, with good instincts, the good
instincts well under control."

"I wonder why it is," murmured MacShaughnassy reflectively, "that bad
people are so much more interesting than good."

"I don't think the reason is very difficult to find," answered Jephson.
"There's more uncertainty about them. They keep you more on the alert.
It's like the difference between riding a well-broken, steady-going hack
and a lively young colt with ideas of his own. The one is comfortable to
travel on, but the other provides you with more exercise. If you start
off with a thoroughly good woman for your heroine you give your story
away in the first chapter. Everybody knows precisely how she will behave
under every conceivable combination of circumstances in which you can
place her. On every occasion she will do the same thing--that is the
right thing.

"With a bad heroine, on the other hand, you can never be quite sure what
is going to happen. Out of the fifty or so courses open to her, she may
take the right one, or she may take one of the forty-nine wrong ones, and
you watch her with curiosity to see which it will be."

"But surely there are plenty of good heroines who are interesting," I
said.

"At intervals--when they do something wrong," answered Jephson. "A
consistently irreproachable heroine is as irritating as Socrates must
have been to Xantippe, or as the model boy at school is to all the other
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