“They are often more admirable,” I said, “but that does not make them artists. If you admire a soldier more than a poet, that does not make him a poet.” They spoke of the reformers working for the present, the artist for all time. “But,” said Virginia, “the result of the reformer’s work will last for all time, too.” I spoke again of “for” and “against” in books, of how we felt that writer to be the greatest who understood and loved the villains as well as the heroes, and saw the strength and weakness of both alike. They all agreed to this, and quoted plenteous incidents; among others, the outcast in “Bob, Son of Battle,” which they had all read and loved. “How I cried over him!” said Marian; and Ruth and Virginia had cried, too. Here Alfred came in with his enthusiasm. “Didn’t you cry over it?” asked Marian. “No,” he answered, “but I almost did.” “Oh, of course not,” she said. “I forgot you are a boy.” “He wouldn’t dare admit it, even if he did,” I said. Virginia said she usually loved the bad characters more than the good ones. We saw how the false simplicity of villains and heroes—as represented in the poor novel—of all good and all bad, and their appropriate punishment and reward, was untrue to life and human nature. Surely, they said, all men had in them both good and bad. Scott, they insisted, made this mistake. I spoke of the psychological and the dramatic methods in novels. I said to Marian: “George Eliot, of whom you spoke the other day, is an example of the psychological method.” I explained the two methods to them, the one going into minute details of motive and thought, the other suggesting to us the motive and thought through the action itself. Marian does not like George Eliot. She greatly prefers Dickens and Thackeray. I said I liked George Eliot, but still I preferred the dramatic method for several reasons. I thought that the passions, moods and changes of the soul were too complicated ever to be put down by any author so as to give the impression of truth. Ruth agreed with me, and said: “Perhaps that is why I like plays better.” To put down how a man would act under any particular circumstances is much more convincing than to tell how he would feel; for life always expresses itself in creative action. I said: “A reader likes to be trusted and understood by the author. He would rather imagine the minute details of feeling as part of the whole swing of action, to fill out the picture for himself, to be recognized by the author as a fellow genius.” Ruth said novels tired her, because most novelists had only three or four characters which they used over and over again. I answered her that this was because they wrote out of their own lives, and their characters were usually but different sides of themselves. I said many great painters used only few models. Virginia said she had remarked that many painters always painted faces that resembled themselves.