s of the Nineteenth Century_,--"What has a man who consents to be
a knee-bumping, elbow-jamming, foothold-struggling strap-hanger--an
abject commuter all his days (for no better reason than that he is not
well enough to keep still and that there is not enough of him to be
alone)--to do with angels--or to do with anything, except to get done
with it as fast as he can?" So say we all of us, hanging on straps to
say it, swaying and swinging to oblivion. "Is there no power," says
Blank, "in heaven above or earth beneath that will _help us to stop_?"

If a civilisation is founded on two senses--the sense of motion and the
sense of mass,--one need not go far to find the essential traits of its
literature and its daily reading habit. There are two things that such a
civilisation makes sure of in all its concerns--hurry and crowd. Hence
the spectacle before us--the literary rush and mobs of books.

V

The Literary Rush

The present writer, being occasionally addicted (like the reader of this
book) to a seemly desire to have the opinions of some one besides the
author represented, has fallen into the way of having interviews held
with himself from time to time, which are afterwards published at his
own request. These interviews appear in the public prints as being
between a Mysterious Person and The Presiding Genius of the State of
Massachusetts. The author can only earnestly hope that in thus
generously providing for an opposing point of view, in taking, as it
were, the words of the enemy upon his lips, he will lose the sympathy of
the reader. The Mysterious Person is in colloquy with The Presiding
Genius of the State of Massachusetts. As The P. G. S. of M. lives
relentlessly at his elbow--dogs every day of his life,--it is hoped that
the reader will make allowance for a certain impatient familiarity in
the tone of The Mysterious Person toward so considerable a personage as
The Presiding Genius of the State of Massachusetts--which we can only
profoundly regret.

The Mysterious Person: "There is no escaping from it. Reading-madness is
a thing we all are breathing in to-day whether we will or no, and it is
not only in the air, but it is worse than in the air. It is underneath
the foundations of the things in which we live and on which we stand. It
has infected the very character of the natural world, and the movement
of the planets, and the whirl of the globe beneath our feet. Without its
little paling of books about it, t