THE DELICIOUS VICE


V

THE OPEN POLAR SEA OF NOVELS

WITH HIGHLY INCENDIARY ADVICE TO BOYS AND SOME MORE ANCIENT HISTORY


After the first novel has been read, somewhere under the seasoned age
of fourteen years, the beginner equipped with inherent genius for novel
reading is afloat upon an open sea of literature, a master mariner of
his own craft, having ports to make, to leave, to take, so splendid
of variety and wonder as to make the voyages of Sinbad sing small by
comparison. It may be proper and even a duty here to suggest to the
young novel reader that the Ten Commandments and all governmental
statutes authorize the instant killing, without pity or remorse, of any
heavy-headed and intrusive person who presumes to map out for him a
symmetrical and well-digested course of novel reading. The murder of
such folks is universally excused as self-defense and secretly applauded
as a public service. The born novel reader needs no guide, counsellor
or friend. He is his own "master." He can with perfect safety and
indescribable delight shut his eyes, reach out his hand, pull down any
plum of a book and never make a mistake. Novel reading is the only
one of the splendid occupations of life calling for no instruction or
advice. All that is necessary is to bite the apple with the largest
freedom possible to the intellectual and imaginative jaws, and let the
taste of it squander itself all the way down from the front teeth until