ore
people. They do greater mischief than ever."

"Don't be envious, parson," said the host.

"No," answered Sewell. "I should be glad of their help. But those
novels with old-fashioned heroes and heroines in them--excuse me, Miss
Kingsbury--are ruinous!"

"Don't you feel like a moral wreck, Miss Kingsbury?" asked the host.

But Sewell went on: "The novelists might be the greatest possible help
to us if they painted life as it is, and human feelings in their true
proportion and relation, but for the most part they have been and are
altogether noxious."

This seemed sense to Lapham; but Bromfield Corey asked: "But what if
life as it is isn't amusing? Aren't we to be amused?"

"Not to our hurt," sturdily answered the minister. "And the
self-sacrifice painted in most novels like this----"

"Slop, Silly Slop?" suggested the proud father of the inventor of the
phrase.

"Yes--is nothing but psychical suicide, and is as wholly immoral as the
spectacle of a man falling upon his sword."

"Well, I don't know but you're right, parson," said the host; and the
minister, who had apparently got upon a battle-horse of his, careered
onward in spite of some tacit attempts of his wife to seize the bridle.

"Right? To be sure I am right. The whole business of love, and
love-making and marrying, is painted by the novelists in a monstrous
disproportion to the other relations of life. Love is very sweet, very
pretty----"

"Oh, THANK you, Mr. Sewell," said Nanny Corey, in a way that set them
all laughing.

"But it's the affair, commonly, of very young people, who have not yet
character and experience enough to make them interesting. In novels
it's treated, not only as if it were the chief interest of life, but
the sole interest of the lives of two ridiculous young persons; and it
is taught that love is perpetual, that the glow of a true passion lasts
for ever; and that it is sacrilege to think or act otherwise." "Well,
but isn't that true, Mr. Sewell?" pleaded Miss Kingsbury.

"I have known some most estimable people who had married a second
time," said the minister, and then he had the applause with him.
Lapham wanted to make some open recognition of his good sense, but
could not.

"I suppose the passion itself has been a good deal changed," said
Bromfield Corey, "since the poets began to idealise it in the days of
chivalry."

"Yes; and it ought to be changed again," said Mr. Sewell.

"What! Back?"

"I don't say