Page:Nye's History of the USA.djvu/244

240 wordy. I have discovered in some of his later books one hundred and eighteen thousand words no two of which are alike. This shows great fluency and versatility, it is true, but we need something else. The reader waits in vain to be thrilled by the author's wonderful word-painting. There is not a thrill in the whole tome.

I had heard so much of Mr. Webster that when I read his book I confess I was disappointed. It is cold, methodical, dry, and dispassionate in the extreme, and one cannot help comparing it with the works of James Fenimore Cooper and Horace.

As I said, however, it is a good book to pick up for the purpose of whiling away an idle hour. No one should travel without Mr. Webster's tale. Those who examine this tale will readily see why there were no flies on the author. He kept them off with this tale.

It is a good book, as I say, to take up for a moment, or to read on the train, or to hold the door open on a hot day. I would never take a long railroad ride without it, eyether. I would as soon forget my bottle of cough-medicine.

Mr. Webster's Speller had an immense sale. Ten years ago he had sold forty million copies. And yet it had this same defect. It was cold, dull, disconnected, and verbose. There was only one good thing in the book, and that was a little literary gem regarding a boy who broke in and