weak or trivial or untrue, it is forgotten like most of the "stories"
in yesterday's newspaper, like most of the novels of last year. The
expression of truth, the transmission of knowledge and emotions between
man and man from generation to generation, these are the purposes of
literature. Not to read books is like being shut up in a dungeon while
life rushes by outside.

I happen to be writing in Christmas week, and I have read for the tenth
time "A Christmas Carol," by Dickens, that amazing allegory in which
the hard, bitter facts of life are involved in a beautiful myth, that
wizard's caldron in which humor bubbles and from which rise phantom
figures of religion and poetry. Can any one doubt that if this story
were read by every man, woman, and child in the world, Christmas would
be a happier time and the feelings of the race elevated and
strengthened? The story has power enough to defeat armies, to make
revolutions in the faith of men, and turn the cold markets of the world
into festival scenes of charity. If you know any mean person you may be
sure that he has not read "A Christmas Carol," or that he read it long
ago and has forgotten it. I know there are persons who pretend that the
sentimentality of Dickens destroys their interest in him. I once took a
course with an over-refined, imperfectly educated professor of
literature, who advised me that in time I should outgrow my liking for
Dickens. It was only his way of recommending to me a kind of fiction
that I had not learned to like. In time I did learn to like it, but I
did not outgrow Dickens. A person who can read "A Christmas Carol"
aloud to the end and keep his voice steady is, I suspect, not a safe
person to trust with one's purse or one's honor.

It is not necessary to argue about the value of literature or even to
define it. One way of bringing ourselves to realize vividly what