the  gossip  of  country  market  women,  the  gradual  de-
cay of  forty  years  of  a  man's  hfe  and  the  gesture  of  a
passionate  moment.  He  finds  himself  equally  unable,
if  he  looks  at  it  from  one  point  of  view — equally  able,
if  he  looks  at  it  from  another  point  of  view — to  repro-
duce a  color,  a  sound,  an  outline,  a  logical  argument,
a  physical  action.  He  can  show  his  readers,  behind
and  around  the  personages  that  for  the  moment  oc-
cupy the  foreground  of  his  story,  the  continual  sugges-
tion of  the  landscape  ;  the  turn  of  the  weather  that  will
turn  with  it  men's  lives  and  fortunes,  dimly  fore-
shadowed on  the  horizon  ;  the  fatality  of  distant
events,  the  stream  of  national  tendency,  the  salient
framework  of  causation.  And  all  this  thrown  upon
the  flat  board  —  all  this  entering,  naturally  and
smoothly,  into  the  texture  of  continuous  intelligent
narration.
