By the Christmas Fire

by Samuel McChord Crothers

It is when the realistic writer turns philosopher and begins to generalize that we must be on our guard against him. He is likely to use his characters as symbols, and the symbolism becomes oppressive. There are some businesses which ought not to be united. They hinder healthful competition and produce a hateful monopoly. Thus in some states the railroads that carried coal also went into the business of coal-mining. This has been prohibited by law. It is held that the railroad, being a common carrier, must not be put into a position in which it will be tempted to discriminate in favor of its own products. For a similar reason it may be argued that it is dangerous to allow the dramatist or novelist to furnish us with a "philosophy of life." The chances are that, instead of impartially fulfilling the duties of a common carrier, he will foist upon us his own goods, and force us to draw conclusions from the samples of human nature he has in stock. I should not be willing to accept a philosophy of life even from so accomplished a person as Mr. Bernard Shaw. It is not because I doubt his cleverness in presenting what he sees, but because I have a suspicion that there are some very important things which he does not see, or which do not interest him.

It is really much more satisfactory for each one to gather his life philosophy from his own experience rather than from what he reads out of a book, or from what he sees on the stage. "The harvest of a quiet eye" is, after all, more satisfying than the occasional discoveries of the unquiet eye that seeks only the brilliantly novel.

The inevitable discrepancy between the literary representations of life and life itself has been the cause of the ancient feud between teachers of morals and writers of fiction. Because of this Plato would banish poets from his Republic and the Puritans would exclude novelists and play-actors from their conventicles. But it is curious to observe how the character of the complaints varies with the change in literary fashions. The argument of serious persons against works of fiction used to be that they put too many romantic ideas into the reader's head.

This was the charge made by Mrs. Tabitha Tenney, one of the first of the long line of American novelists. She wrote a novel entitled "Female Quixotism; exhibited in the Romantic Opinions and Extravagant Adventures of Dorcasina Sheldon." The work was addressed "to all Columbian Young Ladies who read Novels and Romances." To these young ladies the solemn advice of Mrs. Tabitha Tenney was, "Don't."

Miss Dorcasina was certainly a distressing example. "At the age of three years this child had the misfortune to lose an excellent mother, whose advice would have pointed out to her the plain, rational path of life, and prevented her imagination from being filled with the airy delusions and visionary dreams of love and raptures, darts, fire and flames, with which the indiscreet writers of that fascinating kind of books denominated Novels fill the heads of artless young girls to their great injury, and sometimes to their utter ruin." Her father allowed her to indulge her fancy, "never considering their dangerous tendency to a young, inexperienced female mind." The various calamities into which Miss Dorcasina Sheldon fell may be imagined by those who have not the patience to search for them upon the printed pages. Her parting words to those who had the guardianship of female minds had great solemnity. "Withhold from their eyes the pernicious volumes, which while they convey false ideas of life, and inspire illusory expectations, will tend to keep them ignorant of everything worth knowing; and which if they do not eventually render them miserable may at least prevent them from becoming respectable. Suffer not their imaginations to be filled with ideas of happiness, particularly in the connubial state, which can never be realized."

If Mrs. Tabitha Tenney were to come to life in our day I think she would hardly feel like warning the Columbian young ladies against the effect of works of fiction in exaggerating the happiness of life in general or of the connubial state in particular. The young ladies are much more in danger of having their spirits depressed by the painstaking representation of miseries they are never likely to experience. The gloomy views of average human nature which once were conscientiously expounded by "painful preachers" are now taken up by painful play-wrights and story-tellers. Under the spell of powerful imaginations it is quite possible to see this world as nothing but a vale of tears.

Happily there is always a way of escape for those who are quick-witted enough to think of it in time. When fiction offers us only arid actualities, we can flee from it into the romance of real life.

I sympathize with a young philosopher of my acquaintance. He took great joy in a Jack-o-lantern. The ruddy countenance of the pumpkin was the very picture of geniality. Good-will gleamed from the round eyes, and the mouth was one luminous smile. No wonder that he asked the privilege of taking it to bed with him. He shouted gleefully when it was left on the table.