the story-books. There, Algernon takes one long, last look at the
ancestral hall, dashes the tear-drop from his eye, and goes off--to
return in three years' time, rolling in riches. The authors do not
tell us "how it's done," which is a pity, for it would surely prove
exciting.

But then not one novelist in a thousand ever does tell us the real
story of their hero. They linger for a dozen pages over a tea-party,
but sum up a life's history with "he had become one of our merchant
princes," or "he was now a great artist, with the world at his feet."
Why, there is more real life in one of Gilbert's patter-songs than in
half the biographical novels ever written. He relates to us all the
various steps by which his office-boy rose to be the "ruler of the
queen's navee," and explains to us how the briefless barrister managed
to become a great and good judge, "ready to try this breach of promise
of marriage." It is in the petty details, not in the great results,
that the interest of existence lies.

What we really want is a novel showing us all the hidden under-current
of an ambitious man's career--his struggles, and failures, and hopes,
his disappointments and victories. It would be an immense success. I
am sure the wooing of Fortune would prove quite as interesting a tale
as the wooing of any flesh-and-blood maiden, though, by the way, it
would read extremely similar; for Fortune is, indeed, as the ancients
painted her, very like a woman--not quite so unreasonable and
inconsistent, but nearly so--and the pursuit is much the same in one
case as in the other. Ben Jonson's couplet--

"Court a mistress, she denies you;
Let her alone, she will court you"--