nd intelligent households, this sort of writing is
not tolerated, any more than the correlative sort of physical phenomenon
would be,--the gasping, shrieking, sobbing, giggling kind of behavior in a
man or woman.

But there is another and more dangerous working of the same thing; deep,
unsuspected, clothing itself with symptoms of the most defiant
genuineness, it lurks and does its business in every known field of
composition. Men and women are alike prone to it, though its shape is
somewhat affected by sex.

Among men it breaks out often, perhaps oftenest, in violent illusions on
the subject of love. They assert, declare, shout, sing, scream that they
love, have loved, are loved, do and for ever will love, after methods and
in manners which no decent love ever thought of mentioning. And yet, so
does their weak violence ape the bearing of strength, so much does their
cheat look like truth, that scores, nay, shoals of human beings go about
repeating and echoing their noise, and saying, gratefully, "Yes, this is
love; this is, indeed, what all true lovers must know."

These are they who proclaim names of beloved on house-tops; who strip off
veils from sacred secrets and secret sacrednesses, and set them up naked
for the multitude to weigh and compare. What punishment is for such
beloved, Love himself only knows. It must be in store for them somewhere.
Dimly one can suspect what it might be; but it will be like all Love's
true secrets,--secret for ever.

These men of hysteria also take up specialties of art or science; and in
their behoof rant, and exaggerate, and fabricate, and twist, and lie in
such stentorian voices that reasonable people are deafened and bewildered.

They also tell common tales in such enormous phrases, with such gigantic
structure of rhetorical flourish, that the mere disproportion amounts to
false-hood; and, the diseased appetite in listeners growing more and more
diseased, feeding on such diseased food, it is impossible to predict what
it will not be necessary for story-mongers to invent at the end of a
century or so more of this.

But the worst manifestations of this disease are found in so-called
religious writing. Theology, biography, especially autobiography, didactic
essays, tales with a moral,--under every one of these titles it lifts up
its hateful head. It takes so successfully the guise of genuine religious
emotion, religious experience, religious zeal, that good people on all
hands w