his experience of realities.

Your retired officer (to take his particular section of this particular
paper's audience) is nearly always a man with a hobby, and usually a
good scientific or literary hobby at that. He writes many of our best
books demanding research. He takes an active part in public work which
requires statistical study. He is always a travelled man, and nearly
always a well-read man. The broadest and the most complete questioning
and turning and returning of the most fundamental subjects--religion,
foreign policy, and domestic economics--are quite familiar to him. But
the editor was not selecting news for that real man; he was selecting
news for an imaginary retired officer of inconceivable stupidity and
ignorance, redeemed by a childlike simplicity. If a book came in, for
instance, on biology, and there was a chance of having it reviewed by
one of the first biologists of the day, he would say: "Oh, our Public
won't stand evolution," and he would trot out his imaginary retired
officer as though he were a mule.

Artists, by which I mean painters, and more especially art critics, sin
in this respect. They say: "The public wants a picture to tell a story,"
and they say it with a sneer. Well, the public does want a picture to
tell a story, because you and I want a picture to tell a story. Sorry.
But so it is. The art critic himself wants it to tell a story, and so
does the artist. Each would rather die than admit it, but if you set
either walking, with no one to watch him, down a row of pictures you
would see him looking at one picture after another with that expression
of interest which only comes on a human face when it is following a
human relation. A mere splash of colour would bore him; still more a
mere medley of black and white. The story may have a very simple plot;
it may be no more than an old woman sitting on a chair, or a landscape,