further.

Such an investigation has been made of all works in more than one volume
contained in seven branches of the Brooklyn Public Library, and with very
few exceptions it has been found that each successive volume in a series
has been read by fewer persons than the one immediately preceding. What is
true of books in more than one volume is presumably also true, although
perhaps in a less degree, of one-volume works, although we have no means
of showing it directly. Among the readers of every book, then, there are
generally some who, for one reason or other, do not read it to the end.
Our question, "Do readers read?" is thus answered in the negative for a
large number of cases. The supplementary question, "Why do not readers
read?" occurs at once, but an attempt to answer it would take us rather
too deeply into psychology. Whether this tendency to leave the latter part
of books unread is increasing or not we can tell only by repeating the
present investigation at intervals of a year or more. The probability is
that it is due to pure lack of interest. For some reason or other, many
persons begin to read books that fail to hold their attention. In a large
number of cases this is doubtless due to a feeling that one "ought to
read" certain books and certain classes of books. A sense of duty carries
the reader part way through his task, but he weakens before he has
finished it.

This shows how necessary it is to stimulate one's general interest in a
subject before advising him to read a book that is not itself calculated
to arouse and sustain that interest. Possibly the modern newspaper habit,
with its encouragement of slipshod reading, may play its part in producing
the general result, and doubtless a careful detailed investigation would
reveal still other partial causes, but the chief and determining cause
must be lack of interest. And it is to be feared that instead of taking