On readingover what I have written of the Stricklands, I am conscious that they must seemshadowy. I have been able to invest them with none of those characteristicswhich make the persons of a book exist with a real life of their own; and,wondering if the fault is mine, I rack my brains to remember idiosyncrasieswhich might lend them vividness. I feel that by dwelling on some trick ofspeech or some queer habit I should be able to give them a significancepeculiar to themselves. As they stand they are like the figures in an oldtapestry; they do not separate themselves from the background, and at adistance seem to lose their pattern, so that you have little but a pleasingpiece of colour. My only excuse is that the impression they made on me was noother. There was just that shadowiness about them which you may find in peoplewhose lives are part of the social organism, so that they exist in it and by itonly. They are like cells in the body, essential, but, so long as they remainhealthy, engulfed in the momentous whole. The Stricklands were an average familyin the middle class. A pleasant, hospitable woman, with a harmless craze forthe small lions of literary society; a rather dull man, doing his duty in thatstate of life in which a merciful Providence had placed him; two nice-looking,healthy children. Nothing could be more ordinary. I do not know that there wasanything about them to excite the attention of the curious.

回过头来读了读我写的思特里克兰德夫妇的故事，我感到这两个人被我写得太没有血肉了。要使书中人物真实动人，需要把他们的性格特征写出来，而我却没有赋予他们任何特色。我想知道这是不是我的过错，我苦思苦想，希望回忆起一些能使他们性格鲜明的特征。我觉得如果我能够详细写出他们说话的某些习惯或者他们的一些离奇的举止，或许就能够突出他们的特点了。象我现在这样写，这两个人好象是一幅古旧挂毯上的两个人形，同背景很难分辨出来；如果从远处看，那就连轮廓也辨别不出，只剩下一团花花绿绿的颜色了。我只有一种辩解：他们给我的就是这样一个印象。有些人的生活只是社会有机体的一部分，他们只能生活在这个有机体内，也只能依靠它而生活，这种人总是给人以虚幻的感觉；思特里克兰德夫妇正是这样的人。他们有如体内的细胞，是身体所决不能缺少的，但是只要他们健康存在一天，就被吞没在一个重大的整体里。思特里克兰德这家人是普普通通的一个中产阶级家庭。一个和蔼可亲、殷勤好客的妻子，有着喜欢结交文学界小名人的无害的癖好；一个并不很聪明的丈夫，在慈悲的上帝安排给他的那种生活中兢兢业业、恪尽职责：两个漂亮、健康的孩子。没有什么比这一家人更为平凡的了。我不知道这一家人有什么能够引起好奇的人注意的。