Page:Famous Single Poems (1924).djvu/192

 Alas for maiden! alas for Judge! And the sentimental,—that’s one-half “fudge;”

For Maud soon thought the Judge a bore, With all his learning and all his lore;

And the Judge would have bartered Maud’s fair face For more refinement and social grace.

If, of all words of tongue and pen, The saddest are, “It might have been,”

More sad are these we daily see: “It is, but hadn’t ought to be.” But this is not the stuff of which romance is made, the public will have none of it; and Maud Muller and the Beggar Maid and others of that ilk will always be popular heroines.

The task of the patient historian whose duty it too often is to puncture these pleasant fictions is a thankless one. To tear the halo of wifely devotion from the head of the Empress Josephine, to show that Queen Victoria was at bottom only an obstinate and narrow-minded woman—these are acts which to the multitude savor of sacrilege. Purveyors of mental food for popular consumption have long since discovered that a picturesque lie is far more convincing than a drab fact, and that it is a great mistake to permit a slavish regard for the truth