beginning to look deeper into the springs of being, and the hand which had
described was beginning to model figures also which stood alone.

So there followed a number of little dramatic sketches, where the persons
of the drama carried on their little play; and since they were not on a
stage before the spectator, the author constructed a sort of literary stage
for the reader; that is to say, he supplied by paragraphs what in a regular
play would be stage directions. This is seen in such little comedies as _A
Counterfeit Presentment_, which, indeed, was put on the stage. But instead
of pushing forward on this line into the field of great drama, Mr. Howells
contented himself with dexterous strokes with a fine pen, so to speak, and
created a number of sparkling farces like _The Parlor Car_.

The real issue of all this practice in the dramatic art was to disengage
the characters he created from too close dependence on the kind of
circumstance, as of travel, which the author did not invent, and to give
them substantial life in the working out of the drama of their spiritual
evolution. Thus by the time he was released from editorial work, Mr.
Howells was ready for the thorough-going novel, and he gave to readers such
examples of art as _A Modern Instance_, _The Rise of Silas Lapham_, and
that most important of all his novels, _A Hazard of New Fortunes_. By the
time this last novel was written, he had become thoroughly interested, not
merely in the men, women, and children about him, but in that mysterious,
complex order named by us society, with its roots matted together as in a
swamp, and seeming to many to be sucking up maleficent, miasmatic vapors
from the soil in which it was rooted. Like many another lover of his kind,
he has sought to trace the evils of individual life to their source in this
composite order, and to guess at the mode by which society shall right
itself and drink up healthy and life-giving virtues from the soil.