Read them for their brisk and stirring movement; for
the spirit of outdoor adventure and life which crowds them; for
their swift but logical processions of sequences; for the phases
of pioneer Americanism they rawly but graphically portray, and
for their moral values. Read them along with your Coopers and
your Ivanhoe and your Mayne Reids. Read them through, and perhaps
some day, if fortune is kinder to you than ever it was to your
father, with a background behind you and a vision before you, you
may be inspired to sit down and write a dime novel of your own
almost good enough to be worthy of mention in the same breath with
the two greatest adventure stories--dollar-sized dime novels is
what they really are--that ever were written; written, both of
them, by sure-enough writing men, who, I'm sure, must have based
their moods and their modes upon the memories of the dime novels
which they, they in their turn, read when they were boys of your
age.
"I refer, my son, to a book called Huckleberry Finn, and to a
book called Treasure Island."
End of The Project Gutenberg Etext A Plea for Old Cap Collier, by Cobb
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