> At an early age I acquired a taste for novel reading, and indulged it to such an excess, that my mind was enervated, and its relish destroyed for higher and more solid attainments. I feel that I had a capacity for better things; but, under the ascendancy of this idle habit, it sunk into a fatal lethargy, from which neither shame nor ambition could awaken it. The drunkard, in the intervals of sobriety, feels most keenly the evils of intoxication, and, if self love allowed him to be candid, could a tale unfold of disease, of mental and bodily suffering, that would do more for the cause of temperance than all the societies in the world have ever accomplished. The excitement of novel reading is akin to intoxication. When it subsides, it leaves the mind collapsed and imbecile, without the capacity or the inclination for active exertion. I question, whether the confessions of an opium-eater exhibit more striking evidences of the pernicious influence of that stimulating drug on the physical system, than the experience of an habitual novel reader can furnish of the injurious effects, produced on his mental organization by the constant perusal of works of fiction.

Reading novels will make your brains pour out your ears, kid.

Any new form of entertainment will meet resistance.