ops, and visited the Agency,
and the workshops for the benefit of the Indians. He, and the gay and
brilliant throng, visited whatever was curious and interesting, and
embarked on their return to Detroit, after receiving the warm
congratulations of the citizens. I took the occasion to accompany the
party to Detroit.

_4th_. The debasing character of the light and popular literature which
is coming into vogue, is happily alluded to in a casual letter from Dr.
A.W. Ives, of New York. "I regret," he says, "that the well directed
labors of the excellent Otwin cannot be made available, but the truth
is, there is such an unspeakable mass of matter written for the press at
the present day, that all of it cannot be printed, much less be read. I
think it one of the great toils of the age. Indolence is a natural
attribute of man, and he dislikes intellectual even more than physical
toil. Most men read, therefore, only such things as require no thought,
and consequently there is a bounty offered for the most frivolous
literary productions....

"Your isolated position prevents your realizing, to its greatest extent,
the evil of this superfluity of books; but if you were constantly
receiving from thirty to forty daily, weekly, and monthly periodicals,
besides one or more ponderous volumes, every week, I cannot but think
that, with all your ambition and thirst for knowledge, you would wish
rather for an Alexandrian conflagration than an increase of books.

"Every man who thinks he has a new thought, or striking thought, thinks
himself justified in writing a volume. Of this I would not complain if
he would have the ingenuousness to inform the reader, in a _nota bene_,
on what page the new idea could be found, so that, if he paid for the
book, he should be spared the trouble of hunting for the kernel in the
bushel of compiled and often incongruous chaff, in which the author has
dexterously hid it.

"But the labor and expense of new publications are the least of their
evils. You cannot imagine what an influence is exerted, in this city, at
the present time, by 'penny newspapers.' There are from fifteen to
twenty, I believe, published daily, and not less on an average, I
presume, than 5000 copies of each. A number of them strike off from
10,000 to 20,000 every day. They have no regular subscribers, or at
least, they do not depend upon subscribers for a support. They are
hawked about the streets, the steamboats and taverns by boys, and