Waterbury evening Democrat., 1903-04-01
DIME NOVELS.
Tom Reed and J. J. Ingalls, Shared
 MT Hoars Fondness for Them.

l Call NGIlIY ludL IlllIC SIOlS " hISh has lately been going the rounds of the newspapers to the effect that the venerable and scholarly senior senator from Massachusetts, MT Hoar, is an omniverous reader of dime novels" said a capitol atIache. Il have not only seen him buy armfuls of the shockers, but I have sat close to him in trains which he has occupied himself in reading the things with all the mani. fest intensity of interest of messen- ger boy pound on an important errand. The senator never sets out on rail- road journey. in fact, that he does not provide himself with fresh bunch or the thrillers He purchases them at little cigar store and news store on the avenue between the capitol and 6th street. The proprietor of the store always smiles broadly when he sees MT Hoar entering his place, ana turns to the counter where the dime novels are stacked up without even lnqulrlLs of the senator what he Wlshes. ne merely gathers up the latest assortment of Gouge-Eye Georges ana Dan the Devil Destroyers, and Billy the bltes' and wraps them in neat Httle pach- age, after the senator has cast nls eye over the titles with an expression ol mingled delight and anticipation.
 ''The senator only reads the spiiie- sbatterers when he is traVei1ng-he ls always too busy around the capltoi 10 divert himself in that way It IS spectacle worth witnessing to see MT
 s,,s Ns14N (Nlb Hoar settle back in his chair Ill pafioi car. unite his package of dime dread- fuls. and begin to devour the nrst one that meets his eye. A
 s'The blindness of his youthful skin takes on an intenser hue as he reaches the critical points of the yarns, and he begins to sit more erect in his seat, and it is perfectly plain that his eX- citement grows with every step Ill the progress of the yarn he Is devourlng. Sometimes he smiles with obvious sat- isfaction-I always conclude that the hero has just visited some astonlsh1ng sort of retribution upon the villyun or villyuns when MT Hoar sn1lles-and when he finishes one of the yarns he looks out of the car window for a long while. getting it all settled and slowed away in his mind, I suppose, before he takes LID another one. He doesn't take any interest whatever in the comings and goings of the passengers when he has got his stack of dime novels, and have seen him lean out of the car win dow in the Philadelphia station and buy couple of apples from a fruit boy while still keeping his eyes glued to the pages of his absorbing fiction The stuff rests his mind, of course, and gets his thoughts away from the more serious affairs of life. Nobody famil- far with the characteristics of Ameri- can public men of eminence needs to be informed as to how profound stu dent Senator Hoar is and has been all his life He is. I should say, easily the best-read man now in the senate. It shows the catholicity of his mental taste when he can derive an equal amount of enjoyment from Virgil and from consideration of the miraculous deeds of Riley, the Red-headed Roarer of the Rockies.
 ''The late Tom Reed was another eminent New Englander who was de voted to the red-hot paper-covered yarns, but his bent was toward the Hist! Eureka! type of defective stor- ies. He read them every time he got a chance and he was as absorbed a looking statesman when he was in the middle of a Cap Collier or Old Sleuth' story as can be imagined. He read them with particular gusto when his mind was worn out with the exciting affairs of the congress during which the 'Czar' title was fastened to him. He used to retire to the speakers room leaving nf hic cn11no in, Ian chair, and reach into his desk for his dog-eared detective yarns. and, from a worried-looking, distraught leader he would soon lapse into the very picture of happy juvenility as he turned the pages Of the tremendously exciting narrative of the deeds of the extraor- dinarily slippery detectives.
 He hated to be interrupted too, when he was right in the middle of one of these yarns. I remember one occa- sion when two or three of his republi- can confreres rushed into the speak CTS room while MT Reed was stretched out on his couch reading one of the de- tect1ve stories. A situation had arisen on the floor which demanded his immediate assumption of the chair. MT Reed rose from the couch with an eApIeSsloH ol genuine peeVlShneSS.
 Can't you fellows hold 'em at bay until l get through this chapter?' he inquired. =
 They shook their heads and said of the page down with an ejaculation perative. Mir Reed turned the corner O fthe page down with an ejaculation of disgust. carefully locked the thriller away in his desk and numbered out af- ter his colleagues like an office boy who has been called upon to run an errand right while he was in the mid dle of the doings of Merciless Mike the Keel Hauler. He took a genuine in- terest in the eventual fates of his de- tective story heroes, and once heard him say after finishing one of the Old Sleuth' shockers.
 Well, they'll be killing that fellow among them, one of these days. and when that happens I'll feel stranded
 ''The late Senator Ingalls, was an- other of the men of mark, who took rapturous delight in the reading of dime novels. He claimed with all sol emnity that they expanded his intel lect. although his friends always de- rided him when he made this state ment MT Ingalls, always maintained