up through the roots that twine and twist about the bones of the ages
that are dead.

The human mind can no more produce an original thought than a tree can
bear an original fruit. As well might one cry for an original note in
music as expect an original idea from a human brain.

One wishes our friends, the critics, would grasp this simple truth,
and leave off clamoring for the impossible, and being shocked because
they do not get it. When a new book is written, the high-class critic
opens it with feelings of faint hope, tempered by strong conviction of
coming disappointment. As he pores over the pages, his brow darkens
with virtuous indignation, and his lip curls with the Godlike contempt
that the exceptionally great critic ever feels for everybody in this
world, who is not yet dead. Buoyed up by a touching, but totally
fallacious, belief that he is performing a public duty, and that the
rest of the community is waiting in breathless suspense to learn his
opinion of the work in question, before forming any judgment
concerning it themselves, he, nevertheless, wearily struggles through
about a third of it. Then his long-suffering soul revolts, and he
flings it aside with a cry of despair.

"Why, there is no originality whatever in this," he says. "This book
is taken bodily from the Old Testament. It is the story of Adam and
Eve all over again. The hero is a mere man! with two arms, two legs,
and a head (so called). Why, it is only Moses's Adam under another
name! And the heroine is nothing but a woman! and she is described as
beautiful, and as having long hair. The author may call her
'Angelina,' or any other name he chooses; but he has evidently,
whether he acknowledges it or not, copied her direct from Eve. The