as no taste
for profundities likes to read the old sort of stories about love's
pretty fever; the simple person wants to hear about the trials and
crosses of true lovers, the defeat of villains--to enjoy the kindly
finish where faith and virtue are rewarded, and where the unambitious
imagination may picture the coming of a long life of homely toil and
homely pleasure. Perhaps the simple personage has a taste for dukes--I
know of one young person aged thirteen who will not write a romance of
her own without putting her hero at the very summit of the peerage--or
wicked baronets, or marble halls. These tastes are by no means
confined to women; sailors in far-away seas most persistently beguile
their scanty leisure by studying tales of sentiment, and soldiers are,
if possible, more eager than seamen for that sort of reading. The
righteous organiser comes on the scene, and says, "We must not let
these poor souls fritter away any portion of their lives on
frivolities. Let us give them less of light literature and more of the
serious work which may lead them to strive toward higher things." The
aggressively righteous individual has a most eccentric notion of what
constitutes "light" literature; he never thinks that Shakspere is
decidedly "light," and I rather fancy that he would regard
Aristophanes as heavy. If one were to suggest, on his proposing to
place the Irving Shakspere on the shelves of a free library, that the
poet is often foolish, often a buffoon of a low type, often a mere
quibbler, and often ribald, he might perhaps have a fit, or he might
inquire if the speaker were mad--assuredly he would do something
impressive; but he would not scruple to deliver an oration of the
severest type if some sweet and innocent story of love and tenderness
and old-fashioned sentiment were proposed. As for the lady who
dislikes "light" literature, she is a subject for laughter among the
gods. To see such an one present a sensible workman with a pamphlet
entitled "Who Paid for the Mangle?--or, Maria's Pennies," is to know
what overpowering joy means. Yet the severe and strait-laced censors
are not perhaps so much of a nuisance as the sternly-cultured and
emotional persons who "yearn" a great deal. The "yearnest" man or
woman always has an ideal which is usually the vaguest thing in the
cloudland of metaphysics. I fancy it means that one must always be
hankering after something which one has not and keeping a look of
sorrow when one's