and it was as good then as it is now." It simply happens that there are so many good books that it is hard to keep up with the procession. Besides, he has discovered that the books that are talked about can be talked about just as well without being read; this leaves him more time for his old favorites.

"I have a sweet little story for you," says the charming authoress. "I am sure you like sweet

little stories."

"Only one lump, if you please," says the Gentle Reader.

In spite of his genial temperament there are some subjects on which he is intolerant. When he picks up a story that turns out to be only a Tract for the Times, he turns indignantly on the author.

"Sirrah," he cries, under the influence of deep feeling, relapsing into the vernacular of romance, "you gained access to me under the plea that you were going to please me; and now that you have stolen a portion of my time, you throw off all disguise, and admit that you entered with intent to instruct, and that you do not care whether you please me or not! I've a mind to have you

arrested for obtaining my attention under false pretenses! How villainously we are imposed upon! Only the other day a man came to me highly recommended as an architect. I employed him to build me a Castle in Spain, regardless of expense. When I suggested a few pleasant embellishments, the wretch refused on the ground that he never saw anything of the kind in the town he came from, Toledo, Ohio. If he had pleaded honest poverty of invention I should have forgiven him, but he took a high and mighty tone with me, and said that it was against his principles to allow any incident that was not probable. Who said that it should be probable?' I replied. It is your business to make it seem probable.'

He highly disapproves of what he considers the cheese-paring economy on the part of certain novelists in the endowment of their characters. "Their traits are so microscopic, and require such minute analysis, that I get half through the book before I know which is which. It seems as if the writers were not sure that there was enough human nature to go around. They should study the good old story of Aboukir and Abousir.

"There were in the city of Alexandria two men, one was a dyer, and his name was Abou

kir; the other was a barber, and his name was Abousir. They were neighbors, and the dyer was a swindler, a liar, and a person of exceeding wickedness.'

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Now, there the writer and reader start fair. There are no unnecessary concealments. You know that the dyer is a villain, and you are on your guard. You are not told in the first paragraph about the barber, but you take it for granted that he is an excellent, well-meaning man, who is destined to become enormously wealthy. And so it turns out. If our writers would only follow this straightforward method we should hear less about nervous prostration among the reading classes." He is very severe on the whimsical notion, that never occurred to any one until the last century, of saying that the heroine is not beautiful.

"Such a remark is altogether gratuitous. When I become attached to a young lady in fiction she always appears to me to be an extraordinarily lovely creature. It's sheer impertinence for the author to intrude, every now and then,

just to call my attention to the fact that her complexion is not good, and that her features are irregular. It's bad manners, and, besides, I don't believe that it's true."

Nothing, however, so offends the Gentle Reader as the trick of elaborating a plot and then refusing to elucidate it, and leaving everything at loose ends. He feels toward this misdirected ingenuity as Miss Edgeworth's Harry did toward the conundrum which his sister proposed.

"This is quite different," he said, "from the others. The worst of it is that after laboring ever so hard at one riddle it does not in the least lead to another. The next is always on some other principle."

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"Yes, to be sure," said Lucy. "Nobody who knows how to puzzle would give two riddles of the same kind; that would be too easy."

"But then, without something to guide one," said Harry," there is no getting on."

"Not in your regular way," said Lucy. "That is the very thing I complain of," said Harry.

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Complain! But my dear Harry, riddles are meant only to divert one."

"But they do not divert me," said Harry; "they only puzzle me."

The Gentle Reader is inclined to impute unworthy motives to the writer whose work merely puzzles him.

"The lazy unscrupulous fellow takes a job, and then throws it up and leaves me to finish it for him. It's a clear breach of contract! That sort of thing would never have been allowed in any well-governed community. Fancy what would have happened in the court of Shahriar, where story-telling was taken seriously."

Sheherazade has got Sindbad on the moving

island.

"How did he get off?" asks the Sultan.

"That's for your majesty to find out," answers Sheherazade archly. "Maybe he got off, and maybe he did n't. That's the problem."

“Off with her head!" says the Sultan.

When sore beset by novelists who, under the guise of fiction, attempt to saddle him with "the weary weight of all this unintelligible world," the Gentle Reader takes refuge with one who has never deceived him.

"What shall it be?" says

Sir Walter.