Sir: Your question seems to me to be a difficult, or I might almost say, an impossible one to answer. I do not see how a man of any carefulness of thought or decision can have one favorite work of fiction. To answer your question as simply as possible, I should say that of foreign books my favorites are "Don Quixote" and the novels of Goethe and Jean Paul Richter.
As regards English fiction, I should, I think, place George Eliot's "Silas Marner" first, both as a work of art and as fulfilling, to me, all the needs and requirements of a work of fiction; but I could not say this unless I may be allowed to bracket with this book Nathaniel Hawthorne's "House of the Seven Gables," Mrs. Gaskell's "Cranford," Jane Austen's "Persuasion," Mrs. Ritchie's "Story of Elizabeth," and William Black's "Daughter of Heth" – all of which books seem to me to stand in the very first rank, and not only to fulfil the requirements of the human spirit, but to stand the much more difficult test of being, each of them, perfect as a whole.
Dear Sir: You ask for the title of my favorite work of fiction. I answer that I have no one favorite work of fiction. Among the myriad novels which I have read there is none of excellence so supreme that I prefer it before all others. On the other hand, I have favorite novels – a dozen or so; I have never reckoned them up. These I will enumerate as they occur to me: "Don Quixote," "Tom Jones," "Ivanhoe," "The Heart of Midlothian," "Jane Eyre," "David Copperfield," "Tale of Two Cities," "Esmond," "Vanity Fair," "Adam Bede," "Lorna Doone," "Crime and Punishment" (Dostoieffsky), "Monte Cristo," and "Froment Jeune et Risler Ainé."
I do not suggest that these novels are of equal literary merit. I merely say that they are my favorites, that I have read them all with equal pleasure more than once, and that, as time goes on, I hope to read them again.
A QUEEN'S EPITAPH
There lay the others: some whose names were writ
In dust – and, lo! the worm hath scattered it.
There lay the others: some whose names were cut
Deep in the stone below which Death is shut.
The plumèd courtier, with his wit and grace,
So flattered one that scarce she knew her face!
And the sad after-poet (dreaming through
The shadow of the world, as poets do)
Stops, like an angel that has lost his wings,
And leans against the tomb of one and sings
The old, old song (we hear it with a smile)
From towers of Ilium and from vales of Nile.
But she, the loveliest of them all, lies deep,
With just a rude rhyme over her fair sleep.
(Why is the abbey dark about her prest?
Her grave should wear a daisy on its breast.
Nor could an age of minster music be
Worth half a skylark's hymn for such as she.)
With one rude rhyme, I said; but that can hold
The sweetest story that was ever told.
For, though, if my Lord Christ account it meet
For us to wash, sometimes, a pilgrim's feet,
Or slip from purple raiment and sit low
In sackcloth for a while, I do not know;
Yet this I know: when sweet Queen Maud lay down,
With her bright head shorn of its charm of crown
(A hollow charm at best, aye, and a brief —
The rust can waste it, as the frost the leaf),
She left a charm that shall outwear, indeed,
All years and tears – in this one rhyme I read.
THE COST OF THINGS
"Papa, why does bread cost so much money?" asks a child, of its father. Perhaps if the father is indifferent, indolent, or ignorant, he may dodge the question and reply, "Because flour is so scarce." But if he is a thinking and observant man, willing to instruct an ignorant child asking a very natural question, he will not content himself with such a reply, for he must have observed that bread is sometimes high when wheat and flour are very plentiful.
By drawing on his experience he will not fail to recall the fact that, in a season when any particular article is in much demand, the price of that article will rise and will continue to rise until the demand for the article induces a supply of it from outside sources.
Let him recall Christmas and Thanksgiving times, when, for instance, turkeys are in demand. If the supply is light, up goes the price of turkeys; and, if the demand increases, the price will continue to rise unless some means are found of supplying the demand. If turkeys flow into the market of a city from the surrounding country, the rise in price is first checked, and then, as the supply increases, the price falls, and the demand being less than the supply, the price goes to its lowest figure. This is in accordance with the recognized law of supply and demand, the relation between the two always establishing the price.
If the demand is greater than the supply, the price will go up; if the supply is greater than the demand, the price will go down. But this state of things can exist only where the inflow of supply and the outflow of demand are free and unrestricted; for if, from any cause, restriction is placed on the inflow, the outflow will be restricted just in the same way. We may liken the operation of the law to what happens when a bent tube with the ends up is filled with water. If, now, more water is poured in at one end, that same amount will flow out at the other. If the whole capacity of the tube at one end is used to supply water, just that amount will run out at the other; but if one-half the tube at the supply end is plugged up, then only one-half the capacity of the tube will run out at the other.
Reverting to the question of the supply of turkeys in a market, let us suppose that a despot, ungoverned by anything but his own will, is in charge of the city when the turkey market is held, and of the surrounding country, and, wishing to have a plentiful supply of turkeys, he issues his ukase that every turkey within ten miles of the town shall, under severe penalties, be sent into market for sale. Is it not plain that the price of turkeys will at once fall, since the supply will at once become greater than the demand? But suppose this despot has turkeys of his own to sell, and hence desires to make his poor people pay the highest price for their turkeys, so that his coffers may be filled with gold. Now, instead of requiring all turkeys to come in under severe penalties, he does everything he can to keep them out, and issues his ukase that none shall come in, under penalty of death to the importer of turkeys. Is it not as plain as it was in the other case, that the price of turkeys will go up, up, up, until the vast majority of men cannot buy at all?
Suppose that, instead of placing an absolute prohibition upon the importation of turkeys, the despot, convinced that people must have turkeys, and having already arranged to buy all he wants himself, makes a law that every turkey coming into the market shall be taxed one dollar for the privilege of bringing it to market. Now, turkeys will come in if there is still a demand for them, but every one that comes in must pay a tax of a dollar; and, if there are any turkeys already in market, a dollar will be added to their price,