ws, the
moments of strength and of weakness, of wisdom and of folly, of misery
and of pure delight--what a picture!"

"Yes; and how utterly beyond the average reader, who never understands
complexity," he answered. "But I think it a good sign for your chances
of success that you should have complained of the difficulty of
selection in the matter of material rather than bemoan your want of
experience of life. Most young aspirants to literary fame grumble that
they are handicapped for want of experience. They are seldom content
with the material they have at hand--the life they know. They want to
go and live in London, where they seem to think that every one worth
knowing is to be found."

"That isn't my feeling at all," said Beth. "The best people may be met
in London, but I don't believe that they are at their best. The
friction of the crowd rubs out their individuality. In a crowd I feel
mentally as if I were in a maze of telegraph wires. The thoughts of so
many people streaming out in all directions about me entangle and
bewilder me."

"You do not seem to like anything exceptional."

"No, I do not," said Beth. "I like the normal--the everyday. Great
events are not the most significant, nor are great people the most
typical. It is the little things that make life livable. The person
who comes and talks clever is not the person we love, nor the person
who interests us most. Those we love sympathise with us in the
ordinary everyday incidents of our lives, and discuss them with us,
merely touching, if at all, on the thoughts they engender. I don't
want to know what people think as a rule; I want to know what they
have experienced. People who talk facts, I like; people who talk
theories, I fly from. And I think upon the whole that I shall always
like the kind people better than the clever ones. I believe we owe
more to them, too, and learn more from them--more human nature, which
after all is what we want to know."

"But the clever people are kind also sometimes," said Sir George.

"When they are, of course it is perfect," Beth answered. "But judging
the clever ones of to-day by what they write, I cannot often think
them so. The works of our smartest modern writers, particularly the
French, satiate me with their cleverness; but they are vain, hollow,
cynical, dyspeptic; they appeal to the head, but the heart goes empty
away. Few of them know or show the one thing needful--that happiness
is the end of life; and that