William Dean Howells, at a dinner in Boston, said of modern American letters: "The average popular novel shows, on the novelist's part, an ignorance of his trade, which reminds me of a New England clerk. In a New England village I entered the main-street department store one afternoon and said to the clerk at the book counter: 'Let me have, please, the "Letters of Charles Lamb".' 'Post-office right across the street, Mr. Lamb,' said the clerk, with a polite, brisk smile"