I do not think that any endeavor is made to assimilate
the book to the expected customer.
The object is to bring the book
and the man together, and in this way a very large sale is
effected. The same thing is done with illustrated newspapers. The
sale of political newspapers goes on so quickly in these cars that
no such enforced distribution is necessary. I should say that the
average consumption of newspapers by an American must amount to
about three a day. At Washington I begged the keeper of my
lodgings to let me have a paper regularly - one American newspaper
being much the same to me as another - and my host supplied me daily
with four.
But the numbers of the popular books of the day, printed and sold,
afford the most conclusive proof of the extent to which education
is carried in the States. The readers of Tennyson, Mackay,
Dickens, Bulwer, Collins, Hughes, and Martin Tupper are to be
counted by tens of thousands in the States, to the thousands by
which they may be counted in our own islands. I do not doubt that
I had fully fifteen copies of the "Silver Cord" thrown at my head
in different railway cars on the continent of America. Nor is the
taste by any means confined to the literature of England.
Longfellow, Curtis, Holmes, Hawthorne, Lowell, Emerson, and Mrs.
Stowe are almost as popular as their English rivals. I do not say
whether or no the literature is well chosen, but there it is.
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