This mad rush for the latest is largely aided and abetted by that invention of the devil, the literary section of many Sunday newspapers. Finding research a bit dull, the ambitious or needy doctor of philosophy launches into literary criticism for the reading public. He at once discovers that the college sophomore who wrote a particular story is another Thackeray in style. Then in turn a Dickens or a Balzac is found out. Finally the news is passed on the Rialto that there is being issued a story combining the delightful characteristics of the three old masters. And thus and thus it goes, with the whirligig of Sunday newspaper criticism spinning out the tastes of the reading public. Now if these titled critics ever cease discovering great new books as regularly as the day of rest comes around, or if the paper reading public cease to take these critics as truthful, then the teacher may hope to find a more sympathetic field in which to work. Of course the teacher must shake off his pedantry and quit his foolishness in taking a classic beyond the years of the boy whose veins are full of red blood, and putting it on a dissecting table for the study of etymology and syntax. He must know fairly well the boy's likes and dislikes and remember that they are very strong. And he must also remember that the boy is joined to his idols, and these are not to be broken until better ones are substituted. Iconoclasm for its own sake is sheer waste. The teacher himself must be wedded to good literature, or his efforts will avail little. If he knows, from his own quiet reading, a few good books well, that is enough. Sympathetic appreciation, like good nature, is contagious. If the teacher does not appreciate the book, the boy will not--unless he does it out of pardonable perversity.