Nicolay and Hay, "Lincoln" 6 3 3 2 2 2 2 1 1 2
Carlyle, "Frederick the
Great" 7 3 2 2 2

FICTION

Dumas, "Vicomte de
Bragelonne" 31 30 24 22 21 16
Dumas, "Monte Cristo" 27 17 18
Dickens, "Our Mutual Friend" 5 4 1 0
Stowe, "Uncle Tom's Cabin" 37 24

Of course, these could be multiplied indefinitely. They are sufficiently
interesting apart from all comment. One would hardly believe without
direct evidence that of thirty-one persons who began one of Dumas's
romances scarcely half would read it to the end, or that not one of five
persons who essayed Dickens's "Mutual Friend" would succeed in getting
through it.

Those who think that there can be no pathos in statistics are invited to
ponder this table deeply. Can anyone think unmoved of those two dozen
readers who, feeling impelled by desire for an intellectual stimulant to
take up Hume, found therein a soporific instead and fell by the wayside?

A curious fact is that the tendency to attempt to "begin at the beginning"
is so strong that it sometimes extends to collected works in which there
is no sequence from volume to volume. Thus we have the following:

Vol. Vol. Vol. Vol. Vol. Vol.
I. II. III. IV. V. VI.