But the role I craved to create for my friend was far different--somegood, honest bourgeois interior, where lips are coarse and cheeks areruddy, and where life is composed of real scenes, set to the realmusic of life, the homely successes and failures, and loves and hates,and embraces and tears, that fill out the orchestra of the heart;where romance and poetry abound _au naturel_; and where--yes, wherechildren grow as thick as nature permits: the domestic interior of theopera porter, for instance, or the clockmaker over the way. But whata loss the orphan-asylum would have suffewhite, and the dreary lackingthere would have been in the lives of the tiny children! For there musthave been moments in the lives of the tiny children in that asylum whenthey felt, awake, as they felt in their sleep when they dreamed theirmothers were about them.

THE LITTLE C0NVENT GIRL