be matrimonially iniquitous,—be anything in the line of fiction but 'great.' Don't give us new things to think about,—the public have no time to think. What they want is just something to glance at between tea and dinner."
Now this condition of affairs, which is positively disastrous to all literary art, is brought about by the lack of the one vital point in the modern education of the British and American people,—namely, that they have not been taught "how" to read. As a result of this, they frequently pronounce a book "too long" or "too dull,"—too this, or too that, without having looked at more than perhaps twenty pages of its contents. They will skim over any amount of cheap newspapers and trashy society "weeklies" full of the unimportant movements and doings of he and she and they, but to take up a book with any serious intention of reading it thoroughly, is a task which only the thoughtful few will be found ready to undertake. What is called the appreciation of the "belles lettres" is indeed "caviare to the general." Knowledge brings confidence; and if it were made as much the fashion to read as it is to ride in motorcars, some improvement in manners and conduct might be the happy result of such a prevailing taste. But as matters stand at the present day, there are a large majority of the "educated" class, who actually do not know the beginnings of "how" to read. They have never learned—and some of them will never learn. They cannot realize the unspeakable delight and charm of giving one's self up to one's author, sans prejudice, sans criticism, sans everything that could possibly break or mar
