Leaving this particular phase of my subject, I wish to call attention to the well-recognized fact that all perfect people are bores. A perfect character in a novel has no more power over a reader--no more foothold among his sympathies--than a proposition in mathematics would have. Of all stupid creations that the brain of man has given birth to, there are none so stupid as the perfect men and women whom we find upon the pages of fiction. Sometimes we find in actual life a character so symmetrical, so rounded off at the corners, and smoothed at the edges, and polished on the sides, and unexceptionable in all its manifestations, that we cannot find fault with it; yet we find it impossible for us to love it. Such a character gets beyond the reach of our sympathies. Human affection is like ivy. It cannot cling to glass; it must plant its feet in imperfections. It is not to be denied that imperfection is the true flavor of humanity. The mind refuses to sympathize where it does not exist. What the world would call a perfect man--what would be adjudged a perfect man by the best standards--would be as tasteless as a last year's apple. A perfect woman could no more be loved than she could be hated. I never saw a man with a perfect face--a face modelled so symmetrically and so perfectly that no fault could be found with it--who was not more or less a numskull. A pretty man is always a pretty fool; and the more symmetrical the features of a woman are, the more does she approach to the style of beauty and expression and native gifts of a porcelain doll. The mind and the character can be so symmetrical that they will lose all charm and all significance. They descend into simple prettiness, which is simple insipidity.