“What books does he riccomind?  Iv course there’s such folklore as Epicbaulus in Marsupia an’ th’ wurruks iv Hyperphrastus.  But it shows how broad an’ indulgent th’ doctor’s taste is that he has included Milton’s Arryopatigica, if I have th’ name right.  This is what ye might call summer readin’.  I don’t know how I cud describe it to ye, Hinnissy.  Ye wudden’t hardly call it a detective story an’ yet it ain’t a problem play.  Areopapigica is a Greek gur-rul who becomes th’ iditor iv a daily newspaper.  That is th’ beginnin’ iv th’ plot.  I won’t tell ye how it comes out.  I don’t want to spile ye’er injymint iv it.  But ye’ll niver guess who committed th’ crime.  It is absolutely unexpicted.  A most injanyous book an’ wan iv th’ best sellers iv its day.  There were four editions iv thirty copies each an’ I don’t know how manny paper-covered copies at fifty cents were printed f’r circulation on th’ mail coaches.  I’m not sure if it iver was dhramatized; if it wasn’t, there’s a chanst f’r some manager.

“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 jine