The national fancy for sport was in about its healthiest condition, emerging from one state of questionableness and not yet plunged in another.

The chair of the chief of the kinds of literature--poetry--which always exercises a singular influence over the lower forms, was still worthily occupied and surrounded.

And, above all, the appetite for the novel was still eager, fresh, and not in the least sated, jaded, or arrived at that point when it has to be whetted by asafoetida on the plates or cigarettes between the courses.

Few better atmospheres could be even imagined for the combined novel-romance--the story which, while it did not exclude the adventurous or even the supernatural in one sense, insisted on the rational in another, and opened its doors as wide as possible to every subject, or combination of subjects, that would undertake to be interesting.

That the extraordinary reply made by genius and talent to the demand thus created and encouraged should last indefinitely could not be expected: that the demand itself should lead to overproduction and glut was certain.