Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1873-01-09
POisons in Pretty R0ttles.

AS the Christmas time approaches,
the shops all glitter and glisten with
pretty things of every conceivable sort,
and Santa Clauses innumerable are in
speeding the hundreds of articles offered
for sale as possible presents. With the
great majority of these Santa Clauses,
books of one kind and another will form
the bulk of the budget surreptitiousIy
conveyed into the house and out of
sight, and nine tenths Of the parents who
will purchase books for their children,
will buy them without any tolerable
knowledge of their contents. They will
see to it that the bindings are gaily gilded,
that the pictures are of kind likely to
prove attractive, that the volumes
are placed in a pretty box, that
throughout But having satisfied them
few of them, com paratively, will take the
trouble to learn what is inside the books
they buy. They will blindly take it for
granted that the works which are written
and printed and published for boys and
girls are in every way fit for boys and
girls. They will assume that outsides so
fair cannot possibly cover other than
proper literature. But the fact is quite
otherwise The beauty of the druggists
bottles is the same whether they hold con-
fections or poisOns. The gaudiest and
most glittering of our trade palaces are
gin-shops. Lace curtains, rich carpets
and handsome furniture are found no.
where more surely than in gambling sa-
looms, and some of the mildest-mannered
of men have cut throats ahd scuttled
ships as business. 1t is the same in lit
erature as in everything else. The wrong
puts Oh quite as pleasant face as the
right, and the parent who buys books at
random for his children is as likely to
give them bad ones as good ones.
We see children's books almost every
day which are utterly unfit for any child's
perusal. We have seen things which
were worse than smallpox in many
nursery book case, and once we found a
Sunday School library into which a very
pestilence had crept. Il wish l was a
Injun, or a pirate, or something" said
bright boy to us one day, and we ques-
toned him to learn whence he had de-
rived his impressions of savage and law
less life; and as we questioned him, we
saw upon his knee volume from the pen
Of the most prolific of all our writers of
pestilent literature for boys, a writer
whose alliterative nom de p51n2e is known
wherever there are books to be read and
bows to read them That book came from
the Sunday School library, and the inves-
tigatiOn which followed revealed a truly
startling state of facts. Three out of
every five of the books which those boys
and girls had been reading were positive
ly bad, and good many of the others
negatively so, though they were all got
ten up in good style, and all looked as in
nocent as skim milk.
In view of the fact that there's nothing
which does SO much to shape the charac-
ter of child as its reading does, it seems
incredible that any parent should give
books to his children before ascertaining
the precise character Of their contents. 1t
is not enough that there shall be sop OF
diGactic morality poured ever the story.
Pious talk does not cure the inherent bad
ness of a book, the influence of which IS
otherwise unwhOlesome. An exciting,
improbable story, which leads young
readers through scenes of wickedness and
introduces them to bad people, is not re-
deemed by preachment at the end. And
there are hundreds of just this kind OF
books given to children at every return OF
the holiday season.
Glow shall know what is wholesome
and what is not?" asks busy parent.
Il cannot take time to read every book
buy for my boys" Then, sir, you have
no right to give books to your boys, I'M
less you can learn frJm some judicious
friend, or from a conscientious critic,
what their character IS.
1t will not do to trust too implicitly to
the judgment of publishers, even though
they be men of undoubtedly correct in
tentions. Even the Sunday School unions
and publishing houses sometimes make
mistakes. We once asked a juvenile
thief in police court how he fell into
bad ways, and learned that he had be-
come enamored of thief's life through
reading book entitled 1.-THE House of
the Thief" book written expressly for
Sunday Schools, and intended to teach
lesson of honesty. An examination OF
the well-told story convinced US that 1t
could hardly fail to produce in many
children precisely the result which it had
wrought in the life of this one.
Even the reputation of an author IS not
an entirely safe guide. We remember
reading in boyhood story called Leo
of the Alps" written, if memory is not