But perhaps one of them at the same moment was fighting his way through smoke and flame, to save life at the risk of his own.

Boiled dinner and burned firemen are equally true.

Are they equally worthy of description?
What would the age of chivalry be, if the chronicles had recorded only the brutality, filthiness and coarseness of their contemporaries?
The wearing of underclothing unwashed till it fell to pieces; the utter lack of soap; the eating with fingers; the drunkenness and foul-mouthedness that drove women from the table at a certain point, and so inaugurated the custom, now continued merely as an excuse for a cigar?
Some one said once that a man finds in a great city just the qualities he takes to it.

That's true of romance as well.

Modern novelists don't find beauty and nobility in life, because they don't look for them.