Daily Dose

From The Portable Charles Lamb, edited by John Mason Brown

THE TRICK AND MYSTERY

"I have something to do in these book-clubs, and know the trick and mystery of it.  Every new publication that is likely to make a noise, must be had at any rate.  By some they are devoured with avidity.  These would have been readers in the old time I speak of.  The only loss is, that for the good old reading of Addison or Fielding's days is substituted that never-ending flow of thin novelties which are kept up like a ball, leaving no possible time for better things, and threatening in the issue to bury or sweep away from the earth the memory of their cobbler predecessors."

From Readers Against the Grain