The probabilities are, in nine cases out of ten, that
the indignant family will dismiss, as ignorant or hard-hearted, any
practitioner who tells them the unvarnished truth, and proposes to treat
the sufferer in accordance with it.
In the field of literature we find a hysteria as widespread, as
undetected, as unmanageable as the hysteria which skulks and conquers in
the field of disease.
Its commoner outbreaks everybody knows by sight and sound, and everybody
except the miserably ignorant and silly despises. Yet there are to be
found circles which thrill and weep in sympathetic unison with the
ridiculous joys and sorrows, grotesque sentiments, and preposterous
adventures of the heroes and heroines of the "Dime Novels" and novelettes,
and the "Flags" and "Blades" and "Gazettes" among the lowest newspapers.
But in well-regulated and intelligent households, this sort of writing is
not tolerated, any more than the correlative sort of physical phenomenon
would be,--the gasping, shrieking, sobbing, giggling kind of behavior in a
man or woman.
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