at we cannot with any certainty tell what any person will do or
amount to, for, while we know his talents and abilities, we do not know
the resulting whole, which is he himself. THE FIRE-TENDER. So if you
could take all the first-class qualities that we admire in men and
women, and put them together into one being, you wouldn't be sure of the
result?

HERBERT. Certainly not. You would probably have a monster. It takes a
cook of long experience, with the best materials, to make a dish "taste
good;" and the "taste good" is the indefinable essence, the resulting
balance or harmony which makes man or woman agreeable or beautiful or
effective in the world.

THE YOUNG LADY. That must be the reason why novelists fail so lamentably
in almost all cases in creating good characters. They put in real
traits, talents, dispositions, but the result of the synthesis is
something that never was seen on earth before.

THE FIRE-TENDER. Oh, a good character in fiction is an inspiration.
We admit this in poetry. It is as true of such creations as Colonel
Newcome, and Ethel, and Beatrix Esmond. There is no patchwork about
them.

THE YOUNG LADY. Why was n't Thackeray ever inspired to create a noble
woman?

THE FIRE-TENDER. That is the standing conundrum with all the women. They
will not accept Ethel Newcome even. Perhaps we shall have to admit that
Thackeray was a writer for men.

HERBERT. Scott and the rest had drawn so many perfect women that
Thackeray thought it was time for a real one.

THE MISTRESS. That's ill-natured. Thackeray did, however, make ladies.
If he had depicted, with his searching pen, any of us just as we are, I
doubt if we should have liked it much.

MANDEVILLE. That's just it. Thackeray never pretended to make ideals,
and if the best novel is an idealization of human nature, then he was
not the best novelist. When I was crossing the Channel--

THE MISTRESS. Oh dear, if we are to go to sea again, Mandeville, I move
we have in the nuts and apples, and talk about our friends.

III

There is this advantage in getting back to a wood-fire on the hearth,
that you return to a kind of simplicity; you can scarcely imagine any
one being stiffly conventional in front of it. It thaws out formality,
and puts the company who sit around it into easy attitudes of mind and
body,--lounging attitudes,--Herbert said.

And this brought up the subject of culture in America, especially as to
manner. The backlog period hav