too much of it will be taken. When there is complaint that a girl or a boy is injuring the mind by too exclusive a devotion to novels, I believe that it generally means, if the facts of the case were understood, that the mind of the reader is in an unwholesome condition, and that this excessive devotion to fiction is a symptom rather than a disease. When the girl coughs, it is not the cough that is the trouble; this is only a symptom of the irritation of membranes; and I believe that much the same is the case with extravagant novel-readers. Of course this view of the matter will not commend itself to everybody. It is hard for us to shake off the impression of all the countless homilies which have been composed against novel-reading; and we are by no means free from the poison of the ascetic idea that anything to which mankind takes naturally and with pleasure cannot really be good in itself. I hope, however, that it will not appear to you unreasonable when I say that it seems to me far better to insist upon proper methods of reading and upon the selection of books which are genuine literature than to wage unavailing war against the natural love of stories which is to be found in every normal and wholesome human being. If I could be assured that a boy or a girl read only good novels and read them appreciatively and sympathetically, I should never trouble myself to inquire how many he or she read. I should be hopefully patient even if there was apparently a neglect of history and philosophy. I should be confident that it is impossible that the proper reading of good fiction should not in the end both prove beneficial in itself and lead the mind to whatever is good in other departments of literature. I am not pleading for the indiscriminating indulgence in doubtful stories. I do not believe that girls are brought to fine and well-developed womanhood by an exclusive devotion to the chocolate-caramel-and-pickled-lime sort of novels. I do not hold that boys come to nobility and manliness through the influence of sensational tales wherein blood-boultered bandits reduce to infinitesimal powder every commandment of the decalogue. I do, however, thoroughly believe that sound and imaginative fiction is as natural and as wholesome for growing minds as is the air of the seashore or the mountains for growing bodies.