The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1875-11-11
OUR GIRLS.
WHAT THEY SHOULD AND SHOULD
NOT READ.

i NOT READ.
SOME WELL CONSIDERED ADVICE TO MoTHHRs
! SUGGESTIONS AS TO STARTING TIE GIRLS
| ARIGHT-THE sUeGEsTIvKNRss OF GOOD
BOOKS.
In the form of a letter to q mother, the
Hartford Coursnt contains the following
sensible remarks: you may remember
that when left you fortnight ago, you
were going upstairs TO see why light was
cleaning through crack in Jeanie's door
at bslf-past eleven. when she went to bed at
half-past eight. You turned the handle,
and, think, found her on the bed in her
dressing gown, Just beginning the sixteenth
| chapter of Angelic Demons, or Houris
and Hades." She did not hear you until
you gently closed the book, and
advised few hours sleep as a remedy tor
her hot head and aching eyes. The next
day, when she was at school, you looked at
the story which kept her awake two hours
after her bed time, and found 1t an English
society novel. 1t was no Tom Jones or Pa
melia Of hundred years ago, full of the out
spoken cosrseness Of the time, but story of
70 day, In which are men who have broken
every one Of the ten commandments and yet
ara the petted idols of London society. Each
of them, having unfortunately married be-
meath him In early life, and living apart nom
his wife, m2kes love In the most sensuously
| passionste mcnner to a pure young girl.
One Of these gif, g is ready 10 give up every,
thing for her hero, and y only prevented
from leaving her frienes and going TO him
bv the opportune death OF lis wife, and the
other, when the first marriage Is proved
| illegal, throws herself into the arp-cs OF her
''Sir Folko" with pretty scriptural pnr~ .es
and is happy ever after. And the moral u.
the story Is that men should not marry too
early! III you would like to teach your
sixteen ysar-old daughter, how true man
who has made foolish marriage in his
youth can xpiate his folly in after-life, let
ber read the fifty-seventh chapter of Pen
dennis, where George Warrington tells his
trasts it with "Angelic Demons" whose
author. l am sorry to say, has genius which
makes it all the more
UNSAFE FOR YOUNG GIRLS
who can not, as Ruskin says, "discern the
| magnificsnce from the wrong" A bright
child like Jeanie is in no danger Of caring for
the weak, little story that her Cousin Maud
was reading at your house yesterdays
story in which "Boston women of the high
est culture" say, 81 most know" and
| "you must love her heap or the other
one she had last week, full of 'vast and
varied misinformation" concerning the
manners and customs of the English nobil-
/
sham descriptions in cheap society novels,
but story written like "Angelic Demons"
from an inside point OF view, be-
witches her, and fills her with long
inQs for an impossible hero, with the reck-
lessness of one who needs nothing in heaven
or earth" "pale and delicate beauty" and
''earnest, melancholy eyes, How can you
guide Jesnie's reading? It is hard ques-
| ton, but not so hard as to decide now youi
sister can help Maud. II Jeanie could once
thoroughly enjoy the rough burlesque of
'St. Twel'mo," the CONDENSED Novels" or
Orpheus c. Kerr's Higgins" her olsen
chantment would be begun. One of the
most thoughtful and broad-minded
men / have ever known, used to say, "If
must try to lead a purely thoughtless per-
son, or a deliberate wrong-doer, into a
better life, should choose the latter, tor
he, IL persuaded to do good in
stead of evil, will use as much energy and
forethought as in his old way OF living; but
| IL Is next to impossible TO reform man or
woman who does wrong simply without
thinking OF the consequences" And think
when Jeanie knows that there better
books in the world than she has ever read,
those busy eyes and that active brain OF
hers will not be long in finding them. Per-
| hsps she will like three of Charles Reade's
boosk, the only ones, except the little sketch
of" Art" that will be good for her at pres
ent: Win not "The Cloister and the Hearth"
lead her TO "The Household Of Sir
Thomas More,n 'Queen Mary -
bodEss TIC s,or, Portraits" afsa and FrO9ds1
send her to Colley Cibber's autobiography
and Mrs. Delaney's delightful gossipping
letters, and from Christie's Lowland Scotch
version of the Merchant of Venice she per-
haps will turn to Shskspeare's. Poor Maud! 1!
If L thought that "Britomart, the man
hater," would lead her to search for the
other Britomart, who loved
| aTo hunt out perils and ad dventures hard
BY sea, by land, whereso they may be net,
| Only for honor and for high regard"
with Una. Belphoebe, the Red Cross Knight,
Sir Guoyou, and the rest of the court OF
Fserie, should not feel sorry for her. But
she does not care for
eLoRIANA's woNDRoUs KINGDOM,
and lacks not only Jeanie's Imagination,
but her sense OF humor. She might not en-
joy tea-drinking at Crsuford, or the SIM
pie folk Of our village, but should like to
send her for long visit to the Mays of
Stoneborough. or the 3ertrams of Mansfield
Park, IL she did not think them too old
fashioned. And even II she Is little mysti-
| fed at the wholesome breezness of Shirley
Keeldar and Sheila Mackenzie, and does not
understand Romola or Maggie Tuliver, II Is
best that her book friends should be as sweet
and unpretentious as she herself might
be, and not OF the "Iiotty Lady Imogen"
| class. Am i sure that your children will
| read my booksr Children do like them, IL
they have not been fed on terra-alba htera-
ture until they do not know sweetness and
light" when they taste and see them. 1
know little girl of eight, not at all forward
In the pnblic-school sense, who enjoyed the
l trial and caslxet scenes from the "Merchant
Of Venice" and the whole of the Midsum-
mer Nights Dream before she could read,
and, two or three years later. was absorbed
two whole days In the quiet humor and deli
cately drawn pen portraits of pride and
Prejudice I know another OF thirteen,
who, after having read eight or ten of the
Waverly novels" understood and en-
joyed Carlyle's essay on Scott, and still
others year or two older, TO whom Dick
ems, Thsckeray's historical novels, Park
mans histories, Macaulay and Shakespeare,
are as familiar as Mile. Deja and her books
| ara To ,Iaanla. What the child roads ia of