dent of
Tommy's death. These three instances of falsity have been selected
from authors who know the truth and almost always tell it; and all
three have a certain palliation. They come at or near the very end of
lengthy stories. In actual life, of course, there are no very ends:
life exhibits a continuous sequence of causation stretching on: and
since a story has to have an end, its conclusion must in any case
belie a law of nature. Probably the truth is that Tommy didn't die at
all: he is living still, and always will be living. And since Sir
James Barrie couldn't write forever, he may be pardoned a makeshift
ending that he himself apparently did not believe in. So also we may
forgive that lie of Shakespeare's, since it contributes to a general
truthfulness of good-will at the conclusion of his story; and as for
George Eliot--well, she had been telling the truth stolidly for many
hundred pages.

=More Serious Sins Against the Truth.=--But when Charlotte Bronte, in
"Jane Eyre," tells us that Mr. Rochester first said and then repeated
the following sentence, "I am disposed to be gregarious and
communicative to-night," we find it more difficult to pardon the
apparent falsity. In the same chapter, the author states that Mr.
Rochester emitted the following remark:--"Then, in the first place, do
you agree with me that I have a right to be a little masterful,
abrupt, perhaps exacting, sometimes, on the grounds I stated, namely,
that I am old enough to be your father, and that I have battled
through a varied experience with many men of many nations, and roamed
over half the globe, while you have lived quietly with one set of
people in one house?"

Such writing is inexcusably untrue. We cannot believe that any human
being ever asked a direct question so elaborately lengthy. People do
not talk like that. As a contrast, let us notice for a moment the
poignant truthfulness of speech in Mr. Rudyard Kipling's story, "Only
a Subaltern." A fever-stricken private says to Bobby Wick, "Beg y'
pardon, sir, disturbin' of you now, but would you min' 'oldin' my
'and, sir"?--and later, when the private becomes convalescent and
Bobby in his turn is stricken down, the private suddenly stares in
horror at his bed, and cries, "Oh, my Gawd! It can't be _'im!_" People
talk like that.

=The Futility of the Adventitious.=--Arbitrary plotting, as a rule, is
of no avail in fiction: almost always, we know when a story is true
and when it is not. We