But these volumes were usually small--not much larger than those of the Belgian reprints of Dumas which, as one remembers, used to run into the dozen or something like it in the case of his longer books.

Three, however, has obvious advantages; the chief of them being the adjustment to "beginning, middle, and end," though there is a corresponding disadvantage which soon developed itself--and in fact, finally, I have no doubt helped to ruin the form--the temptation to make the _second_ volume a place of mere padding.

But the actual popularity of "the old three-decker" continued for quite two generations, if not more, and was unmistakable.

Library subscriptions were generally adjusted to it; and any circulating-library keeper would tell you that, putting this quite aside, even subscribers to more or fewer volumes than three would take the three-volume by preference.

More than this, still, there is a curious fact necessarily known to comparatively few people.