rawhide to educate them in tumbling and contortion? Well, if I could get
the snake-oil for the joints and a curly young wig, I'd like to get back
at five hundred of those books and devour them again--"as of yore!"




VI

RASCALS

BEING A DISCOURSE UPON GOOD, HONEST SCOUNDRELISM AND VILLAINS.


The people that inhabit novels are like other peoples of the earth--if
they are peaceful, they have no history. So that, therefore, in novels,
as in nations, it is the great restless heights of society that are to
be approached with greatest awe and that engage admiration and regard.
Everybody is interested in Nero, but not one person in ten thousand can
tell you anything definite about Constantine or even Marcus Aurelius. If
you should speak off-handedly about Amelia Sedley in the presence of a
thousand average readers you would probably miss 85 per cent. of effect;
if you said Becky Sharp the whole thousand would understand.

There is this to be said of disreputable folk, that they are clever and
picturesque and interesting, at least.

An elderly jeweler in New York City was arrested several years ago
upon the charge of receiving stolen gold and silver plate, watches and
jewelry from well-known thieves. For forty years he had been a respected