Selected Prose Of Oscar Wilde (1914) Book

So far: so dry. Excellent bedtime reading. Every tale is perhaps three pages long and soooo arch:

" (...and I quote)

"Youth," said the Other, "should suggest innocence."
"But never act on the suggestion. I don't believe the two ever really go together. People talk vaguely about the innocence of a little child, but they take mighty good care not to let it out of their sight for twenty minutes. The watched pot never boils over. I knew a boy once who really was innocent; his parents were in Society, but they never gave him a moment's anxiety from his infancy. He believed in company prospectuses, and in the purity of elections, and in women marrying for love, and even in a system for winning at roulette. He never quite lost his faith in it, but he dropped more money than his employers could afford to lose. When last I heard of him, he was believing in his innocence; the jury weren't."

(An ideal counterpoint to the very serious, rotten long Vollman tome I'm buried under at the moment, certainly.)