The World of Chance by William Dean Howells

With an impatience whose intensity he began to feel as soon as he / permitted himself to indulge it, Ray hurried across to the line of the / elevated road. Now he perceived how intolerable it would be to have / staid to dinner with the Brandreths. He did not resent the failure of / Mr. Brandreth to tell his wife that he had already asked him when she / asked him again; he did not even care to know what his reasons or / exigencies were; the second invitation had been a chance to get away. / From time to time while Mr. Brandreth was showing him the baby, and then / while Mrs. Chapley was setting her mind at rest about her husband by her / researches into the philosophy and character of Hughes, he had / superficially forgotten that the readers' opinions of his story were in, / while his nether thought writhed in anguish around the question of what / their opinions were. When at moments this fully penetrated his / consciousness, it was like a sort of vertigo, and he was light-headed / with it now as he walked, or almost ran, away from Mr. Brandreth's door. / He meant to see Miss Hughes, and beg for a sight of the criticisms; / perhaps she might say something that would save him from the worst, if / they were very bad. He imagined a perfect interview, in which he met no / one but her.

It was Mrs. Denton who stood at the head of the stairs to receive him / when the door promptly opened to his ring; she explained that her / husband had put the lock in order since she last admitted him. Ray / managed to say that he wished merely to see her sister for a moment, and / why, and she said that Peace had gone out, but would be at home again / very soon. She said her father would be glad to have him sit down with / him till Peace came back.

Ray submitted. He found the old man coughing beside the front window, / that looked out on the lines of the railroad, and the ugly avenue / beneath.

Hughes knew him at once, and called to him: "Well, young man! I am glad / to see you! How do you do? " He held out his hand when he was seated, and / when Ray had shaken it, he motioned with it to the vacant chair on the / other side of the window.

"I hope you are well, sir? " said Ray.

"I'm getting the better of this nasty cough gradually, and I pick up a / little new strength every day. Yes, I'm doing very well. For the present / I have to keep housed, and that's tiresome. But it gives me time for a / bit of writing that I have in hand; I'm putting together the impressions / that this civilization of yours makes on me, in a little book that I / call _The World Revisited_."

Ray did not see exactly why Hughes should say _his_ civilization, as if / he had invented it; but he did not disclaim it; and Hughes went on / without interruption from him.

"I hope to get my old friend Chapley to bring it out for me, if I can / reconcile him to its radical opinions. He's timid, Chapley is; and my / book's rather bold."

Ray's thought darted almost instantly to his own book, and ran it over / in every part, seeking whether there might be something in it that was / too bold for a timid publisher, or a timid publisher's professional / readers. He was aware of old Hughes monologuing on with the satisfaction / of an author who speaks of his work to a listener he has at his mercy.

"My book is a criticism of modern life in all its aspects, though / necessarily as the field is so vast, I can touch on some only in the / most cursory fashion. For instance, take this whole architectural / nightmare that we call a city. I hold that the average tasteless man has / no right to realize his ideas of a house in the presence of a great / multitude of his fellow-beings. It is an indecent exposure of his mind, / and should not be permitted. All these structural forms about us, which / with scarcely an exception are ugly and senseless, I regard as so many / immoralities, as deliriums, as imbecilities, which a civilized state / would not permit, and I say so in my book. The city should build the / city, and provide every denizen with a fit and beautiful habitation to / work in and rest in."

"I'm afraid," said Ray, tearing his mind from his book to put it on this / proposition, "that such an idea might be found rather startling."

"How, startling? Why, startling? " Hughes demanded.

"I don't know. Wouldn't it infringe upon private rights? Wouldn't it be / a little tyrannical?"

"What private rights has a man in the outside of his house," Hughes / retorted. "The interior might be left to his ignorance and vulgarity. / But the outside of my house is not for _me_! It's for others! The public / sees it ten times where I see it once. If I make it brutal and stupid, / _I_ am the tyrant, _I_ am the oppressor -- I, the individual! Besides, / when the sovereign people is really lord of itself, it can and will do / no man wrong."

Ray had his misgivings, but he would not urge them, because it was a / gnawing misery to think of anything but his story, and he let Hughes / break the silence that he let follow.

"And so," the old man said presently, as if speaking of his own book had / reminded him of Ray's, "you have written a novel, young man. And what is / your justification for writing a novel at a time like this, when we are / all trembling on the verge of a social cataclysm?"

"Justification? " Ray faltered.

"Yes. How does it justify itself? How does it serve God and help man? / Does it dabble with the passion of love between a girl and boy as if / that were the chief concern of men and women? Or does it touch some of / the real concerns of life -- some of the problems pressing on to their / solution, and needing the prayerful attention of every human creature?"

"It isn't merely a love-story," said Ray, glad to get to it on any / terms, "though it is a love-story. But I've ventured to employ a sort of / psychological motive."

"What sort?"