e binding, and the masses to taking them
out of all the public libraries."

"There is something in what you say," the Easy Chair confessed. "Our
popular failure as a critic is notorious; it cannot be denied. The stamp
of our disapproval at one time gave a whole order of fiction a currency
that was not less than torrential. The flood of romantic novels which
passed over the land, and which is still to be traced in the tatters of
the rag-doll heroes and heroines caught in the memories of readers along
its course, was undoubtedly the effect of our adverse criticism. No, we
could not in conscience compile and publish a list of The Hundred Worst
Books; it would be contrary, for the reasons you give, to public
morals."

"And don't you think," the observer said, with a Socratic subtlety that
betrayed itself in his gleaming eye, in the joyous hope of seeing his
victim fall into the pit that his own admissions had digged for him,
"and don't you think that it would also bring to you the unpleasant
consciousness of having stiffened in your tastes?"

"It might up to a certain point," we consented. "But we should prefer to
call it confirmed in our convictions. Wherever we have liked or disliked
in literature it has been upon grounds hardly distinguishable from moral
grounds. Bad art is a vice; untruth to nature is the eighth of the seven
deadly sins; a false school in literature is a seminary of crime. We are
speaking largely, of course----"

"It certainly sounds rather tall," our friend sarcastically noted, "and
it sounds very familiar."

"Yes," we went on, "all the ascertained veracities are immutable. One
holds to them, or, rather, they hold to one, with an indissoluble
tenacity. But convictions are in the region of character and are of
remote origin. In their safety one indulges one's self in expectations,
in tolerances, and these rather increase with the lapse of time. We
should say that your theory of the stiffening tastes is applicable to
the earlier rather than the later middle life. We should say that the
tastes if they stiffen at the one period limber at the other; their
forbidding rigidity is succeeded by an acquiescent suppleness. One is
aware of an involuntary hospitality toward a good many authors whom one
would once have turned destitute from the door, or with a dole of
Organized Charity meal-tickets at the best. But in that maturer time
one hesitates, and possibly ends by asking the stranger in, especially
if h