sixty coaches containing sixty passengers each and the sixty-
first almost full. I have destroyed 160 tons of obscene lit-
erature.

Anthony Comstock thought of the critical approach as a
process of smelling and weighing. So strong were some of
the trails which he followed that he happened only infre-
quently upon important books. Some of the volumes which
went to make up the one hundred and sixty ton total were:
Only a Boy; The Lustful Turk; Kate Percival, The Belle
of the Delaware; The Lascivious London Beauty; Peep
Behind the Curtains of a Female Seminary; Fanny Hill;
Love on the Sly; Amorous Sketch Book; Voluptuous Con-
fessions; Beautiful Creole of Havana; A Night in a Moorish
Harem; Curtain Drawn Up, Or the Education of Laura;
Flash and Frisky Song Book; Madame Celestine; Isabel
Manton, The Beautiful Courtesan.

Now these books, with the exception of Fanny Hill, are
not held to have literary merit, and it is questionable if
Fanny Hill should be listed among the valuable classics of
the language. To be sure the point can be made, and is
being made increasingly, that even downright pornography
is harmful only in so far as it is made to seem important
by suppression. Whether true or false, this theory is still
a minority opinion; and it seems fair to say that in his own
day the bulk of Comstock's work might well be classed as
a defense of the folkways of his people. Even in his occa-
sional excesses Mr. Comstock may have served a useful
function in acting as a brake to slow down the pace at which
the new freedom approached, so that it should not burst
suddenly upon a community too shockable to afford hospi-
tality to frankness.

Or, perhaps, he played the rôle of King Canute, a man
scorned through the ages most unjustly. Of the usefulness

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