But was it not as real to us while it lasted as many of the scenes in which we actors daily take our parts? And did it not mellow our spirits with mirth, and soften our hearts with tears? And now that it is over are we not likely to be a little better, a little kinder, a little happier for what we have laughed at or wept over?
Ah, master of the good enchantment, you have given us hours of ease and joy, and we thank you for them. But there is a greater gift than that. You have made us more willing to go cheerfully and companionably along the strange, crowded, winding way of human life, because you have deepened our faith that there is something of the divine on earth, and something of the human in heaven.
THACKERAY AND REAL MEN
In that fragrant bunch of Theodore Roosevelt’s Letters to His Children which has just brightened and sweetened our too sadly strenuous times there are some passages on novel-reading which are full of spirited good sense. He says that he can read Pendennis, and The Newcomes, and Vanity Fair over and over again; he agrees with his boy in preferring Thackeray to Dickens, and then he gives the reason—or at least a reason—for this preference:
“Of course one fundamental difference ... is that Thackeray was a gentleman and Dickens was not.”