Page:Marie Corelli - the writer and the woman (IA mariecorelliwrit00coat).pdf/66

 reading her, on the old Woolly West principle of "First hang, then try!"

She has a big public, but it would be a thousand times bigger if only scoffers and doubters would really read these books by the authoress whom they hang without trial. Let them take a course of Marie Corelli during the long winter evenings, passing on from book to book—from the "Romance" to "Vendetta," thence to "Thelma," "Ardath," "Wormwood," "The Soul of Lilith," and so on—in the order in which they were written. For the idle and listless, for the frivolous, for the irreligious, for the purse-proud, for the down-hearted and distressed, she will prove a veritable "cure," for she is at once a moralist and a tonic. And whereas she is a literary sermon in herself to those who listen to other preachers without profit, so will she prove a profitable and restorative change of air to the busy, the honestly prosperous, the "godly, righteous, and sober" of her students. She is for all, and, where funds are scarce and shillings consequently precious, Free Libraries bring her within reach of everybody.

At a time when our leading dramatists and novelists drag their art in the mud for the sake of the lucre that may be found down there in plenty, it is refreshing and hope-inspiring to find that the writer