Moreover the great battle
of society, to crush wrong and elevate right, was never before so
bravely fought, on so many fields, by so many people as to-day. But
because our lovers and heroes no longer brag to the world of their
doings; no longer stand in the moonlight, and sing of their 'dering
does,' the world assumes that the days of tourneys and guitars were the
only days of true love and noble deeds. Even our professed writers of
romance join in the cry. 'Draw life as it is,' they say. 'We find
nothing in it but mediocrity, selfishness, and money-loving.' By all
means let us have truth in our novels, but there is truth and truth.
Most of New York's firemen presumably sat down at noon to-day to a
dinner of corned-beef and cabbage. But perhaps one of them at the same
moment was fighting his way through smoke and flame, to save life at the
risk of his own. Boiled dinner and burned firemen are equally true. Are
they equally worthy of description? What would the age of chivalry be,
if the chronicles had recorded only the brutality, filthiness and
coarseness of their contemporaries? The wearing of underclothing
unwashed till it fell to pieces; the utter lack of soap; the eating with
fingers; the drunkenness and foul-mouthedness that drove women from the
table at a certain point, and so inaugurated the custom, now continued
merely as an excuse for a cigar? Some one said once that a man finds in
a great city just the qualities he takes to it.
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