For the mind of
the reader, always bent to pick up clues, receives no
impression of reality or life, rather of an airless,
elaborate mechanism; and the book remains enthralling,
but insignificant, like a game of chess, not a work of
human art. It seemed the cause might lie partly in the
abrupt attack; and that if the tale were gradually
approached, some of the characters introduced (as it
were) beforehand, and the book started in the tone of a
novel of manners and experience briefly treated, this
defect might be lessened and our mystery seem to inhere
in life. The tone of the age, its movement, the
mingling of races and classes in the dollar hunt, the
fiery and not quite unromantic struggle for existence,
with its changing trades and scenery, and two types in
particular, that of the American handy-man of business
and that of the Yankee merchant sailor--we agreed to
dwell upon at some length, and make the woof to our not
very precious warp. Hence Dodd's father, and
Pinkerton, and Nares, and the Dromedary picnics, and
the railway work in New South Wales--the last an
unsolicited testimonial from the powers that be, for
the tale was half written before I saw Carthew's squad
toil in the rainy cutting at South Clifton, or heard
from the engineer of his "young swell.
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