IN LITERATURE
acter. In such fiction a stranger is represented as entering a community, a group of people formed and settled, and by the magic of his presence transmuting them into quite different persons. This kind of story must express some precious ideal, or it would not be so tenderly popular; but as a picture of life it is both incorrect and immoral, for it both contradicts our experience and relieves us—provided we can entertain the stranger—of responsibility for our conduct. To be sure, the public thinks this type of story far from immoral—rather a religious parable, for does not the author suggest that the stranger is Christ? And does not that suggestion explain the miracles? But here we see how an inclination to magic befuddles our ordinary intelligence. Because the stranger converts everybody he meets, we think he is Christ-like, forgetting that the
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