number who read is less; but we are
considering the vast mass of the reading public and its tastes. I say its
tastes, and probably this is not unfair, although this traveling,
restless, reading public meekly takes, as in the case of the reading
selected in the newspapers, what is most persistently thrust upon its
attention by the great news agencies, which find it most profitable to
deal in that which is cheap and ephemeral. The houses which publish books
of merit are at a disadvantage with the distributing agencies.

Criticism which condemns the common-school system as a nurse of
superficiality, mediocrity, and conceit does not need serious attention,
any more than does the criticism that the universal opportunity of
individual welfare offered by a republic fails to make a perfect
government. But this is not saying that the common school does all that
it can do, and that its results answer to the theories about it. It must
be partly due to the want of proper training in the public schools that
there are so few readers of discrimination, and that the general taste,
judged by the sort of books now read, is so mediocre. Most of the public
schools teach reading, or have taught it, so poorly that the scholars who
come from them cannot read easily; hence they must have spice, and blood,
and vice to stimulate them, just as a man who has lost taste peppers his
food. We need not agree with those who say that there is no merit
whatever in the mere ability to read; nor, on the other hand, can we join
those who say that the art of reading will pretty surely encourage a
taste for the nobler kind of reading, and that the habit of reading trash
will by-and-by lead the reader to better things. As a matter of
experience, the reader of the namby-pamby does not acquire an appetite
for anything more virile, and the reader of the sensational requires
constantly more highly flavored viands. Nor is it reasonable to expect
good taste to be recovered by an indulgence in bad taste.

What, then, does the common school usually do for literary taste?
Generally there is no thought about it. It is not in the minds of the
majority of teachers, even if they possess it themselves. The business is
to teach the pupils to read; how they shall use the art of reading is
little considered. If we examine the reading-books from the lowest grade
to the highest, we shall find that their object is to teach words, not
literature. The lower-grade books are commonl