One could not wish he had done otherwise. A man’s life comes before art, before any other expression. I said many of the “muckrakers” were men who might have been artists, but who felt called to work in this more direct way for the beauty of life, because they could not tolerate its ugliness. But they were not artists; they were something different.
“That may be so,” answered Virginia, “but just the same I admire those brave, muckraking men more than artists.”
“They are often more admirable,” I said, “but that does not make them artists. If you admire a soldier more than a poet, that does not make him a poet.”
They spoke of the reformers working for the present, the artist for all time.
“But,” said Virginia, “the result of the reformer’s work will last for all time, too.”
I spoke again of “for” and “against” in books, of how we felt that writer to be the greatest who understood and loved the villains as well as the heroes, and saw the strength and weakness of both alike. They all agreed to this, and quoted plenteous incidents; among others, the outcast in “Bob, Son of Battle,” which they had all read and loved. “How I cried over him!” said Marian; and Ruth and Virginia had cried, too. Here Alfred came in with his enthusiasm.
“Didn’t you cry over it?” asked Marian.
“No,” he answered, “but I almost did.”
“Oh, of course not,” she said. “I forgot you are a boy.”
“He wouldn’t dare admit it, even if he did,” I said.