The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 10 / The Opinionator

THE COLLECTED WORKS OF AMBROSE BIERCE
VOLUME X
The publishers certify that this edition of
THE COLLECTED WORKS OF AMBROSE BIERCE
consists of two hundred and fifty numbered sets, autographed by the author, and that the number of this set is ......
VOLUME X
THE OPINIONATOR
NEW YORK & WASHINGTON THE NEALE PUBLISHING COMPANY 1911
FREDERICK POLLEY
Copyright, 1911, by The Neale Publishing Company
THOSE who read no books but new ones have this much to say for themselves in mitigation of censure: they do not read all the new ones. They can not; with the utmost diligence and devotion—never weary in ill doing—they can not hope to get through one in a hundred. This, I should suppose, must make them unhappy. They probably feel as a small boy of limited capacity would in a country with all the springs running treacle and all the trees loaded with preserved fruits.
The annual output of books in this country alone is something terrible—not fewer, I am told, than from seven thousand to nine thousand. This should be enough to gratify the patriot who “points with pride” to the fact that Americans are a reading people, but does not point with anything to the quality of what they read. There are apparently more novels than anything else, and these have incomparably the largest sales. The “best seller” is always a novel and a bad one.