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.

But when he was alone Mr. Jack-o-lantern assumed a more grimly realistic
aspect. There was something sinister in the squint of his eye, and
uncanny in the way his rubicund nose gleamed. On entering the room a
little while after I found it in darkness.

"What has become of your Jack-o-lantern?"

"He was making faces at me. I looked at him till I 'most got scared, so
I just got up and blew him out."

I commended my philosopher for his good sense. It is the way to do with
Jack-o-lanterns when they become unmannerly.

And I believe that it is the best way to treat distressing works of the
imagination, though I know that their authors, who take themselves
solemnly, will resent this advice.

We can't blow out a reality, just because it happens to make us
miserable. We must face it. It is a part of the discipline of life. But
a book or a play has no such right to domineer over us. Our own
imagination has the first rights in its own home. If some other person's
imagination intrudes and "makes faces," it is our privilege to