agazine
where it first appeared, seemed to me so perfect in its way that I
should not have known how to better it. Of course, this is a good deal
for a critic to say; it is something like abdicating his office; but I
repeat it. It takes rather more courage for a man to be honest in
fiction than out of it, for people do not much expect it of him, or
altogether like it in him; but in "The Man on Horseback" Mr. White is
at every moment honest. He is honest, if not so impressively honest,
in the other stories, "A Victory for the People," "A Triumph's
Evidence," "The Mercy of Death," and "A Most Lamentable Comedy;" and
where he fails of perfect justice to his material, I think it is
because of his unconscious political bias, rather than anything
wilfuller. In the story last named this betrays itself in his
treatment of a type of man who could not be faithful to any sort of
movement, and whose unfaithfulness does not necessarily censure the
movement Mr. White dislikes. Wonderfully good as the portrait of Dan
Gregg is, it wants the final touch which could have come only from a
little kindness. His story might have been called "The Man on Foot,"
by the sort of antithesis which I should not blame Mr. White for
scorning, and I should not say anything of it worse than that it is
pitilessly hard, which the story of "The Man on Horseback" is not, or
any of the other stories. Sentimentality of any kind is alien to the
author's nature, but not tenderness, especially that sparing sort which
gives his life to the man who is down.

Most of the men whom Mr. White deals with are down, as most men in the
struggle of life are. Few of us can be on top morally, almost as few
as can be on top materially; and probably nothing will more surprise
the saints at the judgment day than to find themselves in such a small
minority. But probably not the saints alone will be saved, and it is
some such hope that Mr. White has constantly in mind when making his
constant appeal to conscience. It is, of course, a dramatic, not a
didactic appeal. He preaches so little and is so effectively reticent
that I could almost with he had left out the preface of his book, good
as it is. Yes, just because it is so good I could wish he had left it
out. It is a perfect justification of his purpose and methods, but
they are their own justification with all who can think about them, and
the others are themselves not worth thinking about. The stories are so
br