ntly. At least, so those veracious histories say. The heroine, for
instance, glides into life full-charged with rank, virtues, a name
three-syllabled, and a white dress that never needs washing, ready to
sail through dangers dire into a triumphant haven of matrimony;--all
the aristocrats have high foreheads and cold blue eyes; all the
peasants are old women, miraculously grateful, in neat check aprons, or
sullen-browed insurgents planning revolts in caves.

Of course, I do not mean that these times are gone: they are alive (in
a modern fashion) in many places in the world; some of my friends have
described them in prose and verse. I only mean to say that I never was
there; I was born unlucky. I am willing to do my best, but I live in
the commonplace. Once or twice I have rashly tried my hand at dark
conspiracies, and women rare and radiant in Italian bowers; but I have a
friend who is sure to say, "Try and tell us about the butcher next door,
my dear." If I look up from my paper now, I shall be just as apt to see
our dog and his kennel as the white sky stained with blood and Tyrian
purple. I never saw a full-blooded saint or sinner in my life. The
coldest villain I ever knew was the only son of his mother, and she a
widow,--and a kinder son never lived. I have known people capable of a
love terrible in its strength; but I never knew such a case that some
one did not consider its expediency as "a match" in the light of dollars
and cents. As for heroines, of course I know beautiful women, and good
as fair. The most beautiful is delicate and pure enough for a type of
the Madonna, and has a heart almost as warm and holy as hers who was
blessed among women. (Very pure blood is in her veins, too, if you care
about blood.) But at home they call her Tode for a nickname; all we can
do, she will sing, and sing through her nose; and on washing-days she
often cooks the dinner, and scolds wholesomely, if the tea-napkins are
not in order. Now, what is anybody to do with a heroine like that? I
have known old maids in abundance, with pathos and sunshine in their
lives; but the old maid of novels I never have met, who abandoned
her soul to gossip,--nor yet the other type, a lifelong martyr of
unselfishness. They are mixed generally, and are not unlike their
married sisters, so far as I can see. Then as to men, certainly I know
heroes. One man, I knew, as high a chevalier in heart as any Bayard of
them all; one of those souls simple and g