Show the evil of novel reading the mischief of voracious novel reading is really much more like the mischief of dram than appears abc first sight it tends to make all other literary nourishment intolerable and to su precede food by drink tho voracious novel reading today to day as we have said rejects scott because scows novels contain so much that is not mere story telling the genuine novel reader deac als what he calls tame stories stones in which the interest is not exaggerated and piled ap ten times as the interests of ordinary life he wants to be yeo linga thrill of excite ment running through his nerves always to be livida in imagination through the concentrated essence of a dundr ed adventurous lives instead of toiling calmly through the ordinary hopes and fears of one no state of mind can be more unwholesome because none is more calculated to divert the energies from the sort of quiet tasks to which they should be habitually applied and to keep them stretched on the tender hooks of expectation waiting for a sort of strain which issever is never likely to occur and if it did occur would certainly not find a mans energies any the better prepared for it for having been worn oufa pre piously with a long series of imaginary excitements excite ments |