ely to our financial condition. Many of you are
business men, and I know how you talk. I ask you to go to see a serious
play, and you say: "Well, I will tell you; I am pretty well worn out
when business is done, and things are not going just as they should, and
I would rather go to the theatre to laugh these days. I don't care to go
to the theatre to think."

In precisely the same way, when you are called upon, after a hard day of
business care and worry, to read a book, and I say to you: "Read Israel
Zangwill's 'Children of the Ghetto'; it is one of the greatest studies
of our day," you say: "The fact is, I should go to sleep over it. I must
have something that has fighting in it. I want 'yore and gore' fiction
this year. Later on, when I get over my business difficulties and get
where things are easy with me, I'll try Zangwill's 'Children of the
Ghetto.' I will sit down with my wife and have her read it aloud." There
is great significance in this confession as it appears to me.

And what is this "yore and gore" fiction when you analyze it? It is
simply a sublimated "dime novel" which, by reason of increased demand
for easy reading, on the part of the tired brain, has been put into a
little better cover, and published by Harpers. Hitherto it was published
by Beadle or some other fellow of that sort. It is current now. The
people are reading it. They will continue to do so for a year or two,
and then it will disappear. I like what Zangwill said of it a while ago.
I cannot quote it exactly, but it was like this: "I had a dream the
other night, wherein I scrambled over the roofs of buildings pursued by
detectives. I lowered myself by drain pipes. I did business in dark
corridors. I retreated up narrow passages with my good broadsword
flaming, and laid scores of men at my feet. I was sealed up in dungeons.
I was snatched out of the deep by the hair of my head. I slew men in
hecatombs; and then, when the morning came and I awoke, there was not a
shred of intellectual wrack left behind on which my mind could take
hold. I had dreamed it all with the cerebellum. It was all organic. Why
didn't I dream a novel by Turgenef, or Bjornsen? It takes brains to
write "Fathers and Sons" or the "Bankrupt," and it takes brains to read
such masterpieces."

With all due respect to the very calm and fine position taken by
Professor McClintock [Prof. W. D. McClintock had asserted his belief
that the twentieth century would stand for a great