American citizen. [volume] (Butler, Butler County, Pa.) 1863-1872, 1864-02-03
NUMBER 8.
THE READ NOTHINgs,

and highly influential party, which is des-
tined to work wonders net onlya a. the COM
ing election, but at a great many coming
elections, and not only on elections but
upon many other phases of national life.
This numerousparty may be termed the
Read Nothings, and their platforms is plain
and simple, as it merely amounts in q
greater or lesser degree, toignoring theex-
istence of all typography in every fosm.
1t is from this order that penitentiaries
are stocked, jails filed, engine houses
crowded with brutal loafers, and the anti
prohibition ranks enlarged 1t is among
the Read Nothings that apathy and indif-
ference to every public duty is cultivated,
for 1T is only by reading that man at the
present day can hope to be an cowant or
'posted up on the questions which are
daily becoming Of more Importance, and
which to neglect will be like neglecting the
most sacred obligations.
1t may be objected that we have made
more Ignorance of the art of reading, or
its neglect, too decided source of evil
But it is not SO! We do not deny there
are legions of well-behaved, honest, in
dustrious beings, who plod and vegetate
onward without ever reading, and who in
nowise belong to the classes above allud-
ed to. But it is equally true that if
young man is to be kept from mischief
from vulgar associates, and above all if it
be hoped to form for him rising mind
which will some day give him social dis
tinction, it cannot be done more effeetual-
ly than by cultivating in him taste for
reading.
What is man at the present day who
does not read newspapers Is he not an
imbecile at the mercy of every one who
chooses to give him an opinion or to warp
his mind Is he not social nonentity,
and when, as occasionally happens, he is a
man of wealth, or with family, is he not
we ask in sober calmness-a drawback
dead weight and an anomaly?
And yet we have met with educated
men who would tell you with calm, sim
pie smile they ne0er read the papers, or
thdt they had no taste for reading at all,
and this with as cool an air as if they were
mentioning that they had no taste for OIL
ives Or tomatoes. In our humble opinion
no man has right to have no taste for
reading-it is duty which he owes to
himself and to those who educated him,
and to the country which requires certain
medium Of mental ability from every one
living in it.
There is avariety of the Read Nothings
who think that if they do read they are
quite right in being as one-sided as they
please in their literary pursuits. One of
these, on being questioned in our hearing
as to what constituted his favorite reading,
replied "prose." To him prose or poetry
were two distinct forms of mental food,
which, like the tomatoes and olives afore-
said, he was at perfect liberty to like or
dislike. This is free country.
There is one branch of the Read Moth
ing order for whom--when they speak the
truth-we always have a sincere pity and
sympathetic esteem. These are the ones
who would read if they had time. These
last occupy compulsory place in the or
der, and they remind US of gentlemanly,
well behaved lovers of liberty cast into an
Italian prison in company with the most
desperate rufians and "outsiders." These
who have no time generally fly from the
order at every opportunity, and it is most
generally from these whose natural love Of
reading has thus at first been checked and
subsequently INDUCED, that the most in
telligent literati have arisen. PhiEadek-
phia Bulletin.