The figures in the table, as has been stated, are averages, and the number of cases averaged decreases rapidly as we reach the later volumes, because, of course, the number of works that run beyond four or five volumes is relatively small.  Hence the figures for the higher volumes are irregular.  Any volume may have been withdrawn separately for reference without any intention of reading its companions.  Among the earlier volumes such use counts for little, owing to the large number of volumes averaged, while it may and does make the figures for the later volumes irregular.  Thus, under History the high number in the twelfth column represents one-twelfth volume of Froude, which was taken out three times, evidently for separate reference, as the eleventh was withdrawn but once.  Furthermore, apart from this irregularity, the figures for the later volumes are relatively large, for a work in many volumes is apt to be a standard, and although its use falls rapidly from start to finish enough readers persevere to the end to make the final averages compare unduly well with the initial ones where the high use of the same work is averaged in with smaller use of dozens of other first and second volumes.  That the falling off from beginning to end in such long works is much more striking than would appear from the averages alone may be seen from the following records of separate works in numerous volumes: 

VOLUMES
I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X
HISTORY

Grote, “Greece” 11 6 5 2 1 0 1 1 1 0
Bancroft, “United States” 22 10 6 8 10 8
Hume, “England” 24 7 5 2 1 1
Gibbon, “Rome” 38 12 7 3 4 6
Motley, “United Netherlands” 7 1 1 1
Prescott, “Ferdinand and
Isabella” 20 4 2
Carlyle, “French Revolution” 18 10 8
McCarthy, “Our Own Times” 27 8 11

  BIOGRAPHY

  Bourienne, “Memoirs of
    Napoleon” 19 18 9 7
  Longfellow’s “Life” 6 4 2
  Nicolay and Hay, “Lincoln” 6 3 3 2 2 2 2 1 1 2
  Carlyle, “Frederick the
    Great” 7 3 2 2 2

  FICTION

Dumas, “Vicomte de
Bragelonne”                 31  30  24  22  21  16
Dumas, “Monte Cristo”         27  17  18
Dickens, “Our Mutual Friend”   5   4   1   0
Stowe, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”    37  24

Of course, these could be multiplied indefinitely.  They are sufficiently interesting apart from all comment.  One would hardly believe without direct evidence that of thirty-one persons who began one of Dumas’s romances scarcely half would read it to the end, or that not one of five persons who essayed Dickens’s “Mutual Friend” would succeed in getting through it.

Those who think that there can be no pathos in statistics are invited to ponder this table deeply.  Can anyone think unmoved of those two dozen readers who, feeling impelled by desire for an intellectual stimulant to take up Hume, found therein a soporific instead and fell by the wayside?