"The importance of numbers is best seen in a street mob, which becomes more tumultuous, more passionate, more a creature of instinct and less a creature of reason, the larger it is. So, too, the reading mob, as it grows bigger, becomes more emotional, more excited, it reads and talks with greater avidity, is increasingly vehement in its likes, dislikes, and opinions, forces the book on its neighbors with greater rigor, buys, borrows, gives, and lends more and more with the swift and sure emotions of instinct. The reading mob is, perhaps, the largest species. The numbers who read the lower bourgeois novel are fabulous. Those who read the higher bourgeois novel are very numerous. In the meridian of its glory the mob novel soars up to several hundred thousands."

-Henry Dwight Sedgewick, "The Mob Spirit in Literature". The New American Type: And Other Essays. 1908.