Were I
Shakespeare himself, and could I in consequence say to her:
"Methinks, child, the creator of Ophelia and Juliet, and Rosamund and
Beatrice, must surely know something about girls," Robina would still
make answer:
"Of course, Pa dear. Everybody knows how clever you are. But I was
thinking for the moment of real girls."
I wonder to myself sometimes, Is literature to the general reader
ever anything more than a fairy-tale? We write with our heart's
blood, as we put it. We ask our conscience, Is it right thus to lay
bare the secrets of our souls? The general reader does not grasp
that we are writing with our heart's blood: to him it is just ink.
He does not believe we are laying bare the secrets of our souls: he
takes it we are just pretending. "Once upon a time there lived a
girl named Angelina who loved a party by the name of Edwin." He
imagines--he, the general reader--when we tell him all the wonderful
thoughts that were inside Angelina, that it was we who put them
there. He does not know, he will not try to understand, that
Angelina is in reality more real than is Miss Jones, who rides up
every morning in the 'bus with him, and has a pretty knack of
rendering conversation about the weather novel and suggestive. As a
boy I won some popularity among my schoolmates as a teller of
stories. One afternoon, to a small collection with whom I was homing
across Regent's Park, I told the story of a beautiful Princess.
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