Show EFFECT OF NOVELS the statistics of popular and circulating A culat cu fing libraries show that 75 per cent of all the books taken out are novels of recent production writes edward J phell phel s ex minister to england in A library for the general public that did not furnish them could not be sustained whatever real treasures of knowledge and literature it might offer probably the most numerous readers of novels are to be found among women perhaps because they have more time and fewer other diversions than men in the large class clam of them who derive their ideas of life and of the world from this source the result is seen in the enormous and increasing business of the divorce courts of which they and then their husbands are the principal patr patrons oils aside from the loose and vague notions of morality that become familiar to them unconsciously from the books they read they enter upon married life with ideas and expectations V so false and theories so absurd that nothing but disappointment and unhappiness pines pinas can follow instead of the impo impossible ss I 1 ble and self sacrificing heroes of their dreams they awake to find themselves married only to men with the imperfections common to humanity they perceive that the perfection they are in search of is to be found in other husbands not in their own on which point they would be a speedily dl i y undeceived if they COU could itee exchange situations with their apparently more fortunate sisters it is not long jong before both parties to a union that has proved a disappointment are ready to escape fro i it or if not one or the other is determined to break away it is probable that all other causes put together are not so prolific of divorce among the class in which it commonly takes place as the fact that its women are brought up on novels of a low grade as their habitual and almost only reading |