atmosphere of the circus-ring and idealized the surroundings.  He calls his tale an essay in poetic realism, “Je me suis trouve dans une de ces heures de la vie, vieillissantes, maladives, laches devant le travail poignant et angoisseux de mes autres livres, en un etat de l’ame ou la verite trop vraie m’etait antipathique a moi aussi!—­et j’ai fait cette fois de l’imagination dans du reve mele a du souvenir.”  We know from the Goncourt Journals exactly what is meant by “du souvenir.”  We know that M. Edmond de Goncourt is but translating into the language of the circus-ring and symbolizing in the story of Gianni and Nello the story of his own literary collaboration with his brother Jules—­a collaboration of quite singular intimacy, that ceased only with Jules’s death in 1870.  Possibly, as M. Zola once suggested, M. Edmond de Goncourt did at first intend to depict the circus-life, after his wont, in true “naturalistic” manner, softening and extenuating nothing:  but “par une delicatesse qui s’explique, il a recule devant le milieu brutal de cirques, devant certaines laideurs et certaines monstruosites des personnages qu’il choisis-sait.”  The two facts remain that in Les Freres Zemganno M. de Goncourt (1) made professional life in a circus the very blood and tissue of his story; and (2) that he softened the details of that life, and to a certain degree idealized it.

Turning to Mrs. Woods’s book and taking these two points in reverse order, we find to begin with that she idealizes nothing and softens next to nothing.  Where she does soften, she softens only for literary effect—­to give a word its due force, or a picture its proper values.  She does not, for instance, accurately report the oaths and blasphemies:—­

“The tents and booths of the show were disappearing rapidly like stage scenery.  The red-faced Manager, Joe, and several others in authority, ran hither and thither shouting their orders to a crowd of workmen in jackets and fustian trousers, who were piling rolls of canvas, and heavy chests, and mountains of planks and long vibrating poles, on the great waggons.  Others were harnessing the big powerful horses to the carts, horses that were mostly white, and wore large red collars.  The scene was so busy, so full of movement, that it would have been exhilarating had not the fresh morning air been full of senseless blasphemies and other deformities of speech, uttered casually and constantly, without any apparent consciousness on the part of the speakers that they were using strong language.  Probably the lady who dropped toads and vipers from her lips whenever she opened them came in process of time to consider them the usual accompaniments of conversation.”

There are a great many reasons against copious profanity of speech.  Here you have the artistic reason, and, by implication, that which forbids its use in literature—­namely, its ineffectiveness.  But though she selects, Mrs. Woods does not refine.