as well as
men, and their major processes are not those of conflict and adventure,
their love means more than mating. Even on so poor a line of distinction
as the "woman's column" offers, if women are to be kept to their four
Ks, there should be a "men's column" also; and all the "sporting news"
and fish stories be put in that; they are not world interests; they are
male interests.

Now for the main branch--the Love Story. Ninety per cent. of fiction is
In this line; this is preeminently the major interest of life--given in
fiction. What is the love-story, as rendered by this art?

It is the story of the pre-marital struggle. It is the Adventures of Him
in Pursuit of Her--and it stops when he gets her! Story after story,
age after age, over and over and over, this ceaseless repetition of the
Preliminaries.

Here is Human Life. In its large sense, its real sense, it is a matter
of inter-relation between individuals and groups, covering all emotions,
all processes, all experiences. Out of this vast field of human life
fiction arbitrarily selects one emotion, one process, one experience, as
its necessary base.

"Ah! but we are persons most of all!" protests the reader. "This is
personal experience--it has the universal appeal!"

Take human life personally then. Here is a Human Being, a life, covering
some seventy years; involving the changing growth of many faculties;
the ever new marvels of youth, the long working time of middle life, the
slow ripening of age. Here is the human soul, in the human body, Living.
Out of this field of personal life, with all of its emotions, processes,
and experiences, fiction arbitrarily selects one emotion, one process,
one experience, mainly of one sex.

The "love" of our stories is man's love of woman. If any dare dispute
this, and say it treats equally of woman's love for man, I answer, "Then
why do the stories stop at marriage?"

There is a current jest, revealing much, to this effect:

The young wife complains that the husband does not wait upon and woo her
as he did before marriage; to which he replies, "Why should I run after
the street-car when I've caught it?"

Woman's love for man, as currently treated in fiction is largely a
reflex; it is the way he wants her to feel, expects her to feel; not a
fair representation of how she does feel. If "love" is to be selected as
the most important thing in life to write about, then the mother's love
should be the principal subject: