Page:Clarence S. Darrow - Realism in Literature and Art (1899).djvu/20

 20 vealed a thousand pictures that hang upon the walls of memory, covered with the dust of years and hidden from our sight. Sometimes, of course, We cry with pain at the picture that is thrown before our view, but life consists of emotions, and we cannot truly live unless the depths are stirred. These great masters may sometimes shock the over-sensitive with the tales they tell of life, but if the tale is true, why hide it from our sight?

There is nothing more common than the protest against the wicked stories of the realistic school, filled with tales of passion and of sin; but he that denies passion denies all the life that exists upon the earth, and cries out against the mother that gave him birth. And he that ignores this truth passes with contempt the greatest fact that nature has impressed upon the world.

Those who condemn as sensual the tales of Tolstoi and Daudet still defend the love stories of which our literature is full. Those weak and silly tales that make women fit only to be the plaything of the world, and deny to them a single thought or right except to serve their master—man. These objectors do not contend that tales dealing with the feelings and affections shall not be told; they approve these tales; they simply insist that they shall be false instead of