Now, if you will observe carefully such a boy when he comes to a certain point in "Robinson Crusoe" you may recognize the stroke of fate in his destiny. If he's the right sort, he will read gayly along; he drums, he slaps himself, he beats his breast, he scratches his head. Suddenly there will come the shock. He is reading rapidly and gloriously. He finds his knife in his pocket, as usual, and puts it back; the top-string is there; he drums the devil's tattoo, he wets his finger and smears the margin of the page as he whirls it over and then--he finds-- "The--Print--of--a--Man's--Naked--Foot--on--the--Shore!!!" Oh, Crackey! At this tremendous moment the novel-reader, who has genius, drums no more. His hands have seized the upper edges of the muslin lids, he presses the lower edges against his stomach, his back takes an added intensity of hump, his eyes bulge, his heart thumps--he is landed--landed! Terror, surprise, sympathy, hope, skepticism, doubt--come all ye trooping emotions to threaten and console; but an end has come to fairy stories and wonder tales--Master Studious is in the awful presence of Human Nature. For many years I have believed that that Print--of--a--Man's--Naked--Foot was set in Italic type in all editions of "Robinson Crusoe." But a patient search of many editions has convinced me that I must have been mistaken. The passage comes sneaking along in the midst of a paragraph in common Roman letters and by the living jingo, you discover it just as Mr. Crusoe discovered the footprint itself! I wish I might tell the reason why no scoundrel was ever a novel reader; that I might browse for the benefit of those who have never been translated into ecstacies over "good old honest scoundrelism and villains" or describe my friend's first blinding and unselfish tears that watered the grave of Helen Mar, but these are among the delicious experiences of the "Vice" itself, so sacred that other hands, no matter how loving, may not be laid upon them. * * * * * Allison has a very happy faculty of hitting upon titles for essays and addresses that stir the imagination and whet the appetite. Probably the best example is "The Delicious Vice" to which reference has just been made. This title was more or less an evolution from an address delivered before the Western Writers Association "On the Vice of Novel Reading" that started a discussion lasting through one whole day. Allison is a warm champion of The Novel as an institution, and as well an avowed and confirmed reader of novels, which he declares are poetry in essence, lacking only the form and rhyme but having measure, the accent and the figures of the whole range of poetry. He says that in all literature--