ore 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