Upon another head, moreover, the novelist shows himself the more
kindly autocrat. There is his power, so freely exercised, to bridge
time. Whereas destiny makes us to watch those in whom we are
interested plod every inch and step of their lives-over each rut,
through each swamp, up each hill,-the novelist, upon his characters
coming to places dull or too difficult, immediately veils from us
their weary struggles. Destiny will never grant such a boon: we must
watch our friends even when they bore us, even when they cause us
pain. Yet this boon is the commonest indulgence of the novelist-as it
now (to become personal) is mine.

I bridge two months.

And you must imagine this bridge as indeed a short and airy passage
across a valley, down into which the persons of our story must
carefully climb, across which they must plod, and up whose far side
they must laboriously scramble to meet us upon the level ground. For
we are much in the position, we novel readers, of village children
curiously watching a caravan of gipsies passing through their
district. The gipsies (who stand for our characters) plod wearily away
along a bend of dusty road. The children cease following, play awhile;
then by a short-cut through the fields overtake the travellers as
again they come into the straight.

So now with you and me. We have no need to follow our gipsies down the
valley that takes two months in the traversing: we skip across the
bridge.

But, leaning over, we may take a shot or two at them as here and there