in great cities by the overwhelming impersonal flood of vast numbers; in
villages it is strengthened by the sight, apparent to the dullest eyes,
of immediate personal and visible application. In other words, we are not
only the characters of our unwritten stories, but also part authors.
Something of the final outcome depends upon us, something of the creative
instinct of the artist is stirred to life within every one of
us ... however unconscious of it in our countrified simplicity we may be.
The sympathy we feel for a distressed neighbor has none of the impotent
sterility of a reader's sympathy for a distressed character in a book.
There is always a chance to try to help, and if that fail, to try again
and yet again. Death writes the only _Finis_ to our stories, and since a
chance to start over again has been so unfailingly granted us here, we
cannot but feel that Death may mean only turning over another page.

I suppose we do not appreciate the seriousness of fiction-writing, nor its
importance to those who cannot get any nearer to real life. And yet it is
not that we are unprogressive. Our young people, returning from college,
or from visits to the city, freshen and bring up to date our ideas on
literature as rigorously as they do our sleeves and hats; but after a
short stay in Hillsboro even these conscientious young missionaries of
culture turn away from the feeble plots of Ibsen and the tame inventions
of Bernard Shaw to the really exciting, perplexing, and stimulating events
in the life of the village grocer.

In "Ghosts," Ibsen preaches a terrible sermon on the responsibility of one
generation for the next, but not all his relentless logic can move you to
the sharp throb of horrified sympathy you feel as you see Nelse
Pettingrew's poor mother run down the street, her shawl flung hastily over
her head, framing a face of despairing resolve, such as can never look at
you out of the pages of a book. Somebody has told her that Nelse has been