y a man named Trevelyan. When I got home I
sat down with it and couldn't let it go. Garibaldi was all the time
doing things, which you never allow your characters to do because you
think they would not be real. He was acting in the most romantic and
heroic manner possible. And his Thousand trooped after him as gayly as
if they were in a melodrama. And yet I understand that Garibaldi was a
real person, and that his exploits can be authenticated.

The competition in your line of business is fierce. You try to hold the
reader's attention to the states of mind of a few futile persons who
never did anything in particular that would make people want to know
them exhaustively. And then along comes the historian who tells all
about some one who does things they are interested in.

You can't wonder at the result. People who ought to be interested in
fiction are carried away by biography, and the chances are that some of
them will never come back. When they once get a taste for highly spiced
intellectual victuals, you can't get them to relish the breakfast food
you set before them. It seems to them insipid.

I know what you will say about Garibaldi. He was not your kind. You
wouldn't touch such a character if it was offered to you at a bargain.
After looking over that expedition to Sicily you would say that there
was nothing in it for you. The motives weren't complicated enough. It
was just plain heroics. You don't care so much for passions as for
problems. You want something to analyze.

Well, what do you say to Cavour? When I was deep in Garibaldi I found I
couldn't understand what he was driving at without knowing something
about Cavour who was always mixed up with what was going on in that
section of the world.

So I took up a Life of Cavour by a man named Thayer. It's the way I
have; one thing suggests another. Once I went up to Duluth and invested
in some corner lots on Superior Street. That suggested Superior City,
just across the river. The two towns were running each other down at a
great rate just then, so I stopped at West Superior to see what it had
to say for itself. The upshot of the matter was that I sized up the
situation about like this. A big city has _got_ to grow up at the head
of Lake Superior. If Duluth grows as much as it thinks it will, it's
bound to take in Superior. And if Superior grows as much as it thinks it
will, it can't help taking in Duluth. So I concluded that the best thing
for me was to ta