So Harley went on and tried to explain how the true realist must be an inspired sort of person, who can rise above purely physical limitations; whose eye shall be able to pierce the most impenetrable of veils; to whom nothing in the way of obtaining information as to the doings of such specimens of mankind as he has selected for his pages is an insurmountable obstacle.
“Your author, then, is to be a mixture of a New York newspaper reporter and the Recording Angel?” suggested Kelly.
“I told you you’d become irreverent,” said Harley; “nevertheless, even in your irreverence, you have expressed the idea. The writer must be omniscient as far as the characters of his stories are concerned—he must have an eye which shall see all that they do, a mind sufficiently analytical to discern what their motives are, and the courage to put it all down truthfully, neither adding nor subtracting, coloring only where color is needed to make the moral lesson he is trying to teach stand out the more vividly.”
“In short, you’d have him become a photographer,” said the Professor.
“More truly a soulscape-painter,” retorted Harley, with enthusiasm.
“Heavens!” cried the Doctor, dropping his cue with a loud clatter to the floor. “Soulscape! Here’s a man talking about not creating, and then throws out an invention like soulscape! Harley, you ought to write a dictionary. With a word like soulscape to start with, it would sweep the earth!”
Harley laughed. He was a good-natured man, and he was strong enough in his convictions not to weaken for the mere reason that somebody else had ridiculed them. In fact, everybody else might have ridiculed them, and Harley would still have stood true, once he was convinced that he was right.
“You go on sawing people’s legs off, Billy,” he said, good-naturedly. “That’s a thing you know about; and as for the Professor, he can go on showing you and the rest of mankind just why the shortest distance between two points is in a straight line. I’ll take your collective and separate words for anything on the subject of surgery or mathematics, but when it comes to my work I wouldn’t bank on your theories if they were endorsed by the Rothschilds.”
“He’ll never write a decent book in his life if he clings to that theory,” said Kelly, after Harley had departed. “There’s precious little in the way of the dramatic nowadays in the lives of people one cares to read about.”
Nevertheless, Harley had written interesting books, books which had brought him reputation, and what is termed genteel poverty—that is to say, his fame was great, considering his age, and his compensation was just large enough to make life painful to him. His income enabled him to live well enough to make a good appearance among, and share somewhat at their expense in the life of, others of far greater means; but it was too small to bring him many of the things which, while not absolutely necessities, could not well be termed luxuries, considering his tastes and his temperament. A little more was all he needed.