"
"Then," said the Professor, with a dexterous jab of his cue at the
pool-balls--"then, in your estimation, an author is a thing to be led
about by the nose by the beings he selects for use in his books?"
"You put it in a rather homely fashion," returned Harley; "but, on
the whole, that is about the size of it."
"And all a man needs, then, to be an author is an eye and a type-
writing machine?" asked the Professor.
"And a regiment of detectives," drawled Dr. Kelly, the young surgeon,
"to follow his characters about."
Harley sighed. Surely these men were unsympathetic.
"I can't expect you to grasp the idea exactly," he said, "and I can't
explain it to you, because you'd become irreverent if I tried."
"No, we won't," said Kelly. "Go on and explain it to us--I'm bored,
and want to be amused."
So Harley went on and tried to explain how the true realist must be
an inspired sort of person, who can rise above purely physical
limitations; whose eye shall be able to pierce the most impenetrable
of veils; to whom nothing in the way of obtaining information as to
the doings of such specimens of mankind as he has selected for his
pages is an insurmountable obstacle.
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