MAGIC AND WONDER
we put down the book, is evidence of some trick of magic, some eluding of truth—for looking at men and women around us, we are convinced that such satisfaction is not reached that way. Besides, we have learned to think that people in poverty or misery are still in trouble even though they are brave about it; if we could agree that goodness is a talisman, we might as well give up all social work, on the ground that the worthy poor are as happy as possible, and the unhappy poor must be unworthy.
What Dickens has done, then, is to state his ideals in terms of what pretends to be real experience. Our admiration cannot be withheld from the ideals, nor can our intelligence endorse the account of life. If it is a fairy story that we are reading, we ought not to be deceived into mistaking it for history. There is reason to think, however, that Dickens
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