Mandeville.  Don’t you think these novels fairly represent a social condition of unrest and upheaval?

Herbert.  Very likely; and they help to create and spread abroad the discontent they describe.  Stories of bigamy (sometimes disguised by divorce), of unhappy marriages, where the injured wife, through an entire volume, is on the brink of falling into the arms of a sneaking lover, until death kindly removes the obstacle, and the two souls, who were born for each other, but got separated in the cradle, melt and mingle into one in the last chapter, are not healthful reading for maids or mothers.

The mistress.  Or men.

The fire-tender.  The most disagreeable object to me in modern literature is the man the women novelists have introduced as the leading character; the women who come in contact with him seem to be fascinated by his disdainful mien, his giant strength, and his brutal manner.  He is broad across the shoulders, heavily moulded, yet as lithe as a cat; has an ugly scar across his right cheek; has been in the four quarters of the globe; knows seventeen languages; had a harem in Turkey and a Fayaway in the Marquesas; can be as polished as Bayard in the drawing-room, but is as gloomy as Conrad in the library; has a terrible eye and a withering glance, but can be instantly subdued by a woman’s hand, if it is not his wife’s; and through all his morose and vicious career has carried a heart as pure as a violet.

The mistress.  Don’t you think the Count of Monte Cristo is the elder brother of Rochester?

The fire-tender.  One is a mere hero of romance; the other is meant for a real man.

Mandeville.  I don’t see that the men novel-writers are better than the women.

Herbert.  That’s not the question; but what are women who write so large a proportion of the current stories bringing into literature?  Aside from the question of morals, and the absolutely demoralizing manner of treating social questions, most of their stories are vapid and weak beyond expression, and are slovenly in composition, showing neither study, training, nor mental discipline.

The mistress.  Considering that women have been shut out from the training of the universities, and have few opportunities for the wide observation that men enjoy, isn’t it pretty well that the foremost living writers of fiction are women?

Herbert.  You can say that for the moment, since Thackeray and Dickens have just died.  But it does not affect the general estimate.  We are inundated with a flood of weak writing.  Take the Sunday-school literature, largely the product of women; it has n’t as much character as a dried apple pie.  I don’t know what we are coming to if the presses keep on running.

Our next door.  We are living, we are dwelling, in a grand and awful time; I’m glad I don’t write novels.