Page:Clarence S. Darrow - Realism in Literature and Art (1899).djvu/16

 16 at every page that the people of the book are men of straw, that no such beings ever lived upon the earth. We would take no interest in men and women that are myths conjured up to play their parts, and remind us in every word they speak that, regardless of the happiness or anguish the author makes them feel, they are but myths and can know neither joy nor pain.

It may be that the realistic tale is commonplace, but so is life, and the realistic tale is true. Among the countless millions of the earth it is only here and there, and now and then, that some soul is born from out the mighty depths that does not soon return to the great sea and leave no ripple on the waves.

In the play of life each actor seems important to himself; the world he knows revolves around him as the central figure of the scene; his friends rejoice in all the fortune he attains and weep with him in all his grief. To him, the world is bounded by the faces that he knows and the scenes in which he lives. He forgets the great surging world, outside, and cannot think how small a space he fills in that infinity which bounds his life. He dies, and a few sorrowing friends mourn him for a day, and the world does not know he ever lived or ever died. In the ordinary life nearly all the events are commonplace; but a few important days are thinly