human
I'll tell you. This morning as we came up I was talking all the way with your cousin. It took some time to break the ice, but gradually she began to say things, half stories, half poetic, not out of books; things that, if said with assurance, in the city would be called wit. And then I began to see her emotional side, her pure imagination, such a refinement of appreciation and justice--I think there is an immovable basis of justice in her nature--and charity, and I think she'd be heroic, with all her gentleness, if occasion offered.
gpt
I see, said Philip, rather lightly,
human
and this more gravely,
gpt
I believe you. I fancy she has not the least idea what her qualities are, or her capacities of doing or of suffering, and the world will never know--that is the point-unless some genius comes along and reveals them.
human
How?
gpt
Why, through a tragedy, a drama, a story, in which she acts out her whole self. Some act it out in society. She never will. Such sweetness and strength and passion--yes, I have no doubt, passion under all the reserve! I feel it but I cannot describe it; I haven't imagination to make you see what I feel.
human
You come very near it,
gpt
Materials! You writers go searching all round for materials, just as painters do, fit for your genius.
human
But don't you know that the hardest thing to do is the obvious, the thing close to you?
gpt
I dare say. But you won't mind? It is just an illustration. I went the other day with mother to Alice's house. She was so sort of distant and reserved that I couldn't know her in the least as I know her now. And there was the rigid Puritan, her father, representing the Old Testament; and her placid mother, with all the spirit of the New Testament; and then that dear old maiden aunt, representing I don't know what, maybe a blind attempt through nature and art to escape out of Puritanism; and the typical old frame farmhouse--why, here is material for the sweetest, most pathetic idyl. Yes, the Story of Alice. In another generation people would come long distances to see the valley where Alice lived, and her spirit would pervade it.