Complete and unabridged, with 59 full-page plates by William Merritt Chase, Willard Metcalf and Robert Henri. An essay in praise of reading fiction as an addiction - the dime novels of boyhood, the habit that never lifts, and the pleasure of not defending it. Allison also wrote the words to a drinking song still sung, and this is the same voice. This edition binds fifty-nine plates of painting with the text, among them works by Edward Lamson Henry, William Merritt Chase and George Bellows, dating from 1867 to 1922.