"Approve of novels!" said he, energetically. "If I had my way, the pestiferous things should never come near my house. I totally condemn them. I don't see how any consistent Christian can suffer them. They're a pack of lies, anyhow."
"Do you not think," said I, "that we ought to discriminate; that there are different sorts of novels, and that we ought not to condemn the good with the bad?"
"I don't believe in no kind of fiction, nohow," said Mr. Hardcap, emphatically. "What we want is facts, Mr. Laicus-hard facts. That's what I was brought up on when I was a boy, and that's what I mean to bring my boys up on."
I thought of Mr. Gradgrind, but said nothing.
"Yes," said Mr. Hardcap, half soliloquizing, "there is Charles Dickens. He was nothing in the world but a novel writer, and they buried him in Westminster Cathedral, as though he were a saint; and preached sermons about him, and glorified him in our religious papers. Sallie is crazy to get a copy of his works, and even wife wants to read some of them. But they'll have to go out of my house to do it, I tell ye. Why, they couldn't make more to do if it was Bunyan or Milton."
"Bunyan?" said I. "Do you mean the author of Pilgrim's Progress?"
"Yes," said he: "that is a book. Why, it's worth a hundred of your modern novels."
"How is that?" said I. "Pilgrim's Progress, if I mistake not, is fiction."
"Oh! well," said .Mr. Hardcap, "that's a very different thing. It isn't a novel. It's a allegory. That's altogether different."
"What is the difference?" said I.