Passage 1The ballad and the fork song have long been recognized as important keys to the thoughts and feelings of a people, but the dime novel though sought by the collector and referred to in a general way by the social historian, is dismissed with a smile of amusement by almost everyone else.Neither fork songs nor dime novels were actually created by the plain people of America.But in their devotion to these modes of expression, the people made them their own. The dime novel, interested as i