CHAPTER VIII
There is no word in the English language more unceremoniously and indefinitely kicked and cuffed about, by what are called sensible people, than the word romance . When Mr. Smith or Mr. Stubbs has brought every wheel of life into such range and order that it is one steady, daily grind,—when they themselves have come into the habits and attitudes of the patient donkey, who steps round and round the endlessly turning wheel of some machinery—then they fancy that they have gotten ‘the victory that overcometh the world.’
All but this dead grind, and the dollars that come through the mill, is by them thrown into one waste ‘catch-all’ and labelled romance . Perhaps there was a time in Mr. Smith’s youth,—he remembers it now,—when he read poetry, when his chee
