Our Manifold Nature - Stories From Life #267739

These stories are simply what they profess to be - studies from life. They appeared originally in magazines, some of them in a more or less unsatisfactory condition, having been mutilated for convenience of space, or in order to remove from them any idea of unusual import. Successful magazines dig deep grooves for themselves, and anything that does not fit into these is shunned as dangerous. Once established, they become for the most part unprogressive, neither leading nor following, but continuing to offer us the kind of thing that pleased our parents. Consequently they cease to appeal to us, and finally expire in a resolute effort to resist any attempt to induce them to air the grievances, touch upon the interests, or meet the special demands generally of the present generation. Diffident young writers, full of the force which is carrying us onward and upward, and cruelly perplexed be between what they perceive and which those in authority insist that they ought to be perceiving, crawl along in them on feet of lead until the restraint becomes unbearable, and then they break out on their own account in new directions, and their success proves to be the deathblow of their oppressors.