Page:Clarence S. Darrow - Realism in Literature and Art (1899).djvu/24

 24 hand; but these are theories, and the abstract cannot suffer pain. Dickens went out into the streets of the great city and found poor little Joe sweeping the crossing with his broom. All around was the luxury and the elegance, which the rich have ever appointed to themselves; great mansions, fine carriages, beautiful dresses, but in all the great city of houses. and homes poor little Joe could find no place to lay his head. His home was in the street, and every time he halted for a moment in the throng the policeman touched him with his club and bade him "Move on." At last, ragged, wretched, almost dead with "moving on," he sank down upon the cold stone steps of a magnificent building erected for "The Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts." As we think of wretched, ragged Joe in the midst of all this luxury and wealth, we see the tens of thousands of other waifs in the great cities of the world, and we condemn the so-called civilization of the earth that builds the mansions of the rich and great upon the rags and miseries of the poor.

The true realist cannot worship at the shrine of power, nor prostitute his gifts for gold. With an artist's eye he sees the world exactly as it is, and tells the story faithful unto life. He feels for every heart that beats, else he could not paint them as he does. It takes a soul to warm