The common school is a machine of incalculable value.  It is not, however, automatic.  If it is a mere machine, it will do little more to lift the nation than the mere ability to read will lift it.  It can easily be made to inculcate a taste for good literature; it can be a powerful influence in teaching the American people what to read; and upon a broadened, elevated, discriminating public taste depends the fate of American art, of American fiction.

It is not an inappropriate corollary to be drawn from this that an elevated public taste will bring about a truer estimate of the value of a genuine literary product.  An invention which increases or cheapens the conveniences or comforts of life may be a fortune to its originator.  A book which amuses, or consoles, or inspires; which contributes to the highest intellectual enjoyment of hundreds of thousands of people; which furnishes substance for thought or for conversation; which dispels the cares and lightens the burdens of life; which is a friend when friends fail, a companion when other intercourse wearies or is impossible, for a year, for a decade, for a generation perhaps, in a world which has a proper sense of values, will bring a like competence to its author. (1890.)