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Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Book and heart: essays on literature and life, Chapter 1: discontinuance of the guide-board (search)
oclamation; and this change comes simply from the fact that fiction is drawing nearer to life. In real life, as we see it, the moral is usually implied and inferential, not painted on a board; you must often look twice, or look many times, in order to read it. The eminent sinner dies amid tears and plaudits, not in the state-prison, as he should; the seed of the righteous is often seen begging bread. We have to read very carefully between the lines if we would fully recognize the joy of Marcellus exiled, the secret ennui of Caesar with a senate at his heels. Thus it is in daily life — that is, in nature; and yet many still think it a defect in a story if it leaves a single moral influence to be worked out by the meditation of the reader. On my lending to an intelligent young woman, the other day, Mr. Hamlin Garland's remarkable volume, Main-travelled roads, she returned it with the remark that she greatly admired all the stories except the first, which seemed to her immoral. I