"The darin' rescue iv Areopatigica be Oliver Cromwell--but I won't tell
ye. Ye must read it. There ar-re some awful comical things in it. I
don't agree with Uncle Joe Cannon, who says it is trashy. It is light,
perhaps even frivolous. But it has gr-reat merit. I can't think iv
annything that wud be more agreeable thin lyin' in a hammock, with a
glass iv somethin' in ye'er hand on a hot day an' readin' this little
jim iv pure English an' havin' a profissor fr'm colledge within aisy
call to tell ye what it all meant. I niver go f'r a long journey. I mane
I niver go f'r a long journey without a copy iv Milton's Agropapitica in
me pocket. I have lent it to brakemen an' they have invaryably returned
it. I have read it to men that wanted to fight me an' quited thim. Yet
how few people iv our day have read it! I'll bet ye eight dollars that
if ye wait till th' stores let out ye can go on th' sthreet an' out iv
ivry ten men ye meet at laste two, an' I'll take odds on three, have
niver aven heerd iv this pow'ful thragedy. Yet while it was runnin' ye
cudden't buy a copy iv th' Fireside Companyon an' f'r two cinchries it
has proticted th' shelves iv more libries thin anny iv Milton's pomes,
f'r Hogan tells me this author, who ye hardly iver hear mentioned in th'
sthreet cars at th' prisint moment, was a pote as well as an author an'
blind at that, an', what is more, held a prom'nent pollytickal job. I
wondher if two hundred years fr'm now people will cease to talk iv
William Jennings Bryan. He won't, but will they?

"Well, sir, it must be a grand thing to injye good books, but it must be
grander still to injye anny kind iv books. Hogan can read annything. He
ain't a bit particklar. He's tur-rbly addicted to th' habit. Long years
ago I decided that I cudden't read annything but th' lightest newspaper
with me meals. I seldom read between meals excipt now an' thin f'r
socyability's sake. If I am with people that are readin' I'm very apt to