University of Virginia Library

1. CHAPTER I.

Our story will be found to illustrate one of the current commonplaces
of the day. Ever since my Lord Byron, in that poem
of excellently expressed commonplaces, Don Juan, declared that
“truth was stranger than fiction,” every newspaper witling rings
the changes upon the theme, until there is no relief to its dull-toned
dissonance. That truth should frequently be found to be
much stranger than any fiction, is neither so strange nor out of
the course of things; but is just in accordance, if we bestow any
thought upon the matter, with the deliberate convictions of every
reasoning mind. For, what is fiction, but the nice adaptation,
by an artist, of certain ordinary occurrences in life, to a natural
and probable conclusion? It is not the policy of a good artist to
deal much in the merely extravagant. His real success, and the
true secret of it, is to be found in the naturalness of his story, its
general seemliness, and the close resemblance of its events to
those which may or must take place in all instances of individuals
subjected to like influences with those who figure in his narrative.
The naturalness must be that of life as it is, or with life as it is
shown in such picturesque situations as are probable—seemingly
real—and such as harmonize equally with the laws of nature,
and such as the artist has chosen for his guide. Except in stories
of broad extravagance—ghost stories for example—in which

the one purpose of the romancer—that of exciting wonder—is declared
at the outset—except in such stories, or in others of the
broad grin—such as are common and extravagant enough among
the frontier raconteurs of the West, it were the very worst policy
in the world for a writer of fiction to deal much in the marvellous.
He would soon wear out the patience of the reader, who would
turn away, with a dissatisfaction almost amounting to disgust, from
any author who should be found too frequently to employ what is
merely possible in human progress. We require as close reasoning,
and deductions as logically drawn, in tale and novel, as
in a case at law or in equity; much more close, indeed, than is
often found to be the case in a Congressional harangue, and a far
more tenacious regard to the interest of the reader than is shown
in the report of a modern secretary. Probability, unstrained,
must be made apparent at every step; and if the merely possible
be used at all, it must be so used only, as, in looking like the
probable, it is made to lose all its ambiguous characteristics.
What we show must not only be the truth, but it must also seem
like the truth; for, as the skill of the artist can sometimes enable
him to make what is false appear true, so it is equally the case,
that a want of skill may transmute the most unquestionable truth
into something that nine persons in ten shall say, when they behold
it, “it looks monstrous like a lie!”

That we are not at liberty to use too freely what is merely possible
in the material brought before us, is a fact more particularly
known to painters, who have often felt the danger of any attempt
to paint the sky as it sometimes appears to them. They dread to
offend the suspicious incredulity of the cold and unobserving citizen.
They see, with equal amazement and delight—but without
daring to delineate—those intenser hues and exquisite gradations
of light and shadow, those elaborate and graceful shapes of cloud,
born of the rainbow—carnation, green and purple, which the sun
sometimes, in fantastic mood, and as if in equal mockery of human
faith and art, makes upon the lovely background of the sky
which he leaves at setting. The beautiful vision gone from sight,
who would believe the poor artist, whatever his accuracy and felicity
of touch and taste, who had endeavoured to transfer, before
it faded, the vanishing glory to his canvass? Who could suppose,

and how admit, that there had ever been such a panorama, of
such super-artistical splendour, displayed before his eyes, without
commanding his admiration and fixing his attention? The very
attempt to impose such an exhibition upon him as natural, would
be something of a sarcasm, and a commentary upon the dull eye
and drowsy mind which had failed to discern it for themselves.
Nay, though the artist grappled the dull citizen by the arm at the
very instant, and compelled his gaze upon the glorious vision ere it
melted into the thin gray haze of evening, would he not be apt to
say, “How strange! how very unnatural!” Certainly, it would
be a nature and a truth infinitely more strange than the most
audacious fiction that ever grew up at the touch of the most fantastic
votary of art.