This passage fully characterizes Dick's activity, which lasted from the fifties until his death, in 1893. He was not a man of deep learning, and did not produce any masterpieces, such as the other writers of the time were printing in the South. But he atoned for this by his great earnestness and good common sense, which led him to choose the best subjects for his stories, such as would be of the most immediate good for his humble readers. He translated or imitated the leading popular books of his time, not limiting himself to such as were taken out of Jewish life, but independently of their religious tenor. Among his translations we find the works of Bernstein, Campe, Beecher-Stowe; there are imitations of Danish, French, Polish, and Russian books; and many subjects, not easily traceable now, have been suggested to him by other literatures. He has also written many stories taken from the life of the Lithuanian Jews. He ascribes great importance to biographies, devoting several introductions to impress the necessity of reading these. But he treats just as frequently geographical and historical themes; among the latter he has even dared to give an impartial discussion of the Reformation. At first Dick's books were small 16mos of rarely more than forty-eight pages, and up to the year 1871 the abbreviation AMD, for his name, occurs but twice. After that all his works bear the initials, or even the name in full. The small size of the books is due to his desire to make them accessible to the poorest of his race; this necessitated a retrenchment of nearly all the works which he translated. Only in the eighties, when reading had become universal and more expensive works could be published, did he issue octavos of considerable thickness, some of them being four-volumed books. Dick had no talent as a writer, and his style is but a weak reflection of the originals which he translated. The language he uses is a frightful mixture of Judeo-German with German, the latter frequently predominating over the first, so that he is often obliged to give in parentheses the explanation of unusual words. And so it happened that, although his purpose had been a good one, and his influence had at first been salutary on a very large circle of readers, he has set a bad example to a large host of scribblers who have taken all imaginable liberties with the language and the subjects they treated of, and have produced a flood of bastard literature under which the many better productions are entirely drowned. He has destroyed all feeling for a proper diction, and has cultivated only a passion for reading, so that it was necessary for his followers to write 'ein höchst interessanter Roman' on the title-page, and parade the book with crumbs of German words unintelligible to the public, in order to find a ready sale.