It would serve people right--almost....

One drop--oh, confound the drops! The professor tried to read.

The book he opened had been a famous novel, a best-seller, some five years ago.

It had been thought "advanced." Advanced!--but now how inconceivably flat and stale! How on earth had anyone ever praised it, called it "epoch-marking," bought it by the thousand thousand?
Why, the thing was dead--a dead book, than which there is nothing deader.

This reflection gave him something to think of for a while.