ance. If you attribute to them that importance,
you are guilty of false sentiment. The facts of life convict you.

See how delicately Charles Lamb could hold the balance in such an
essay as _Dream Children_. Great-grandmother Field is just in her
place, upright, graceful, and the best of dancers; and Alice's little
right foot plays its involuntary movement in the nick of time; and
when Uncle John died, the "children fell a-crying" at the narrative
and asked about the mourning which they were wearing. It is all just
important enough, just trivial enough, to carry its fragile burden of
sentiment--so much, and no more. The charm is complete. Conceive what
Dickens would have made of the story if he had been writing it! How
sickly a fantasy of Paul Dombeys and Little Nells and garrulous "wild
waves" he would have conjured up for _his_ dream children! His dream
children--the good ones, at any rate--were little old people,
monstrosities, freaks. Reality rejects monstrosities, and what reality
rejects is no subject for literature--strictly speaking, is no subject
at all--save when, like goblins and fairies, it assumes the
quasi-reality of fantasy and dreams.

I remember a story by a popular modern writer, Mr. E. Temple Thurston.
It appeared in a volume entitled _Thirteen_. The author arranged his
story with skill. He led up to his _denouement_ with admirable
stage-management. The story was about a little boy who understood that
his father wanted a shop and fifty pounds to buy it with. This amiable
child sallies forth from his poor quarter of the city and tramps to
the distant regions where rich people live. Nothing doubting, he asks
for fifty pounds. He receives sixpence. He exchanges it for a pair of
braces and an insurance ticket. He drowns himself with exquisite
deliberation, and on the merits of his death and the insurance ticket
the fifty pounds are forthcoming.

The defects of the story are obvious. The little boy has no proper
place in this world, and his drowning, so far from being pathetic, was
the best thing that could happen to him. For he was a freak, a
monstrosity. Even those who may not accept this view must at least
agree that he ought to have known better, and deserved a whipping
rather than the reward of martyrdom and sentimental praise. But even
if we assume that the boy is a possible creature, and that his act in
begging for the money was beautiful and moving, we cannot escape the
objection that the fatal