The Birmingham age-herald., 1904-10-15

fl FEED insanity Is new phrase
 @H that is achieving popularity
 - among the writer's of today. Speed insanity is met with more often in discussions of the automobile than anywhere else, and that it has an apt ap- plication there can be little doubt. But while the general public hastens to de- precate the automibilist and hurls in his face the accusation that he is the most pronounced victim of speed insanity" it can not be denied that the man who likes to travel swiftly whether 1t be on a railway train, in an automobile or in a chute. has a very potent excuse to make. There Is a fascination about moving rap on a ratio with the speed attained. The faster we go the faster we want to go and the end is not yet in sight. People talk of the heroic qualities that lie dor mant in the locomotive engineer, of the danger and fascination of his calling, but what is the risk of sitting calmly in a locomotive cab while the huge machine spins along steel rails compared to that incurred by the chauffeur who hurtles along country highway at equal speed, with track that holds out thousand dangers and confronted at every turn with dangers that mean life or death No one can truthfully say that such a frenzied career is not inspiriting to the man who drives an automobile. Automo- bling is the result of a strenuous age and Is without doubt the most exciting sport that mere man has ever yet en- joyed. Speed insanity is making the automobile manufacturers rich, and it is still spreading.
 Generso Uavese, who is said to be the champion feneer of the world, says that President Roosevelt is an adept at the game. Judging from the president s achievements as a dodger and his feats of evasion, the agilaty he displays in hurdling the restraints put about him by the constitution of the United States and the ability he has displayed In warding off pertinent questions that have inter- esting answers-judging from all these qualifications there Is no reason to be- lieve that Mir. Roosevelt is not good fencer, but not with the foils.
 The output of fiction continues to as- tonish statisticians and others who take the trouble to investigate the matter. With a thousand new books on the mar ket and a million short stories turned out every month 1t would seem that the public appetite would be satiated. but not so. The American people devour fiction as no race in the history of the world has ever done before. Apparently their capacity for this kind of mental stimu- lation Is unlimited. Thousands of writers are grinding out copy every day, other thousands are engaged in printing it and millions are doing the reading. It is es- timated now that about every two men in five have a taste for reading. The other three probably haven't time." We hear much these days of the inferior quality of our modern literature Critics tell us that we have no great poets and no great novellsts but there is a ray of readers of the country are slowly but gradually elevating the class of fiction which they read. Some day we will probably work back to the height at tained during the Elizabethan and victo- rian ages.
 pr. Helsprecht the great Assyrian ex. plorer, tells us that in about one hundred vaorc from, data will have foiriv