the manner of C. Brockden Brown’s “Weiland,” could be worked up from the
ravings of a lunatic. There are a vast number of persons who have wild,
harrowing tales. In fact, the audience for such stories is larger than
the number of readers of the finer quality of literature. A writer in a
recent newspaper says: “The masses do not read the magazines, but they
do read sensational literature in the form of dime novels and weekly
story papers, and this flashy fiction earns far more money for its
writers than is made by more ambitious authors and more pretentious
publications.”