"It's astonishing," said Charles Bellingham, "how we do like the books that go for our heart-strings. And I really suppose that you can't put a more popular thing than self-sacrifice into a novel. We do like to see people suffering sublimely."
"There was talk some years ago," said James Bellingham, "about novels going out." "They're just coming in!" cried Miss Kingsbury.
"Yes," said Mr. Sewell, the minister. "And I don't think there ever was a time when they formed the whole intellectual experience of more people. They do greater mischief than ever."
"Don't be envious, parson," said the host.
"No," answered Sewell. "I should be glad of their help. But those novels with old-fashioned heroes and heroines in them--excuse me, Miss Kingsbury--are ruinous!"
"Don't you feel like a moral wreck, Miss Kingsbury?" asked the host.
But Sewell went on: "The novelists might be the greatest possible help to us if they painted life as it is, and human feelings in their true proportion and relation, but for the most part they have been and are altogether noxious."
This seemed sense to Lapham; but Bromfield Corey asked: "But what if life as it is isn't amusing? Aren't we to be amused?"
"Not to our hurt," sturdily answered the minister. "And the self-sacrifice painted in most novels like this----"
"Slop, Silly Slop?" suggested the proud father of the inventor of the phrase.