We lay aside some authors with a sense of fulness that will not let the attention be immediately distracted to other persons and things. The greatest books put the mind at once into a fruitful state, as if it had received seed of instantly bearing power. Less great books may still give us the desire to imitate their heroes or follow their maxims. Only dead books neither beget new thoughts nor incite by examples. As the characters of children are partly moulded from their surroundings, so the imaginary friends of fiction are mental associates for good or ill. We take heart and hope from the novelist's scenes, or are so wrought upon by his personages that these phantoms move us more than most real men and women. If all we know of Adam Bede is what we read of him, pray what more do we know of Czar Peter? Instead of lamenting the fascination of the story-wright, let us rather plead for its noble use, saying of him, as a great and generous brother writer said of Dickens: "What a place it is to hold in the affections of men! What an awful responsibility hanging over a writer! What man holding such a place, and knowing that his words go forth to vast congregations of mankind--to grown folks, to their children, and perhaps to their children's children--but must think of his calling with a solemn and humble heart! May love and truth guide such a man always!" Most of us have known an era in life when we looked down on novels like Miss Muloch's, with their gentle refrain: "He was so handsome, how could she help loving him? She was so beautiful, what could he do but adore her?" Better worth reading were stories of frontier trails, knightly tourneys, chases of smuggler and corvette--those stimulating feasts that we swallowed rather too hastily for health, and which, I grant the St. Louis preacher, formed so rich a mixture that nightmare sometimes followed a _pâté_ of adventure and murder on which we had too bountifully supped.