continuous wear in the cushion of that particular chair to which every
honest man who has acquired the library vice sooner or later gets
attached with a love no misfortune can destroy. As he sits thus, having
closed the lids of, say, some old favorite of his youth, he will
inevitably ask himself if it would not have been better for him if he
hadn't. And the question once asked must be answered; and it will be an
honest answer, too. For no scoundrel was ever addicted to the delicious
vice of novel-reading. It is too tame for him. "There is no money in
it."

* * * * *

And every habitual novel-reader will answer that question he has asked
himself, after a sigh. A sigh that will echo from the tropic deserted
island of Juan Fernandez to that utmost ice-bound point of Siberia where
by chance or destiny the seven nails in the sole of a certain mysterious
person's shoe, in the month of October, 1831, formed a cross--thus:

*
* * *
*
*
*

while on the American promontory opposite, "a young and handsome woman
replied to the man's despairing gesture by silently pointing to heaven."
The Wandering Jew may be gone, but the theater of that appalling
prologue still exists unchanged. That sigh will penetrate the gloomy
cell of the Abbe Faria, the frightful dungeons of the Inquisition, the
gilded halls of Vanity Fair, the deep forests of Brahmin and fakir, the