The Canton mail. [volume] (Canton, Miss.) 18??-1882, 1876-04-29
EJUVENILE LITERATIRE.
What Children May and May Not Read
With Profit.

The. flood of pernicious literature is COZ
stantly increasing, and if some means ar
net found to stem it, the rising generatio
will be engulfed in a sea of immoralit
which it will create.
Childhood is the age of imagination
At no time during life is the mind $
ready to believe all that the ears heal
and at no time is it possible for sucl
vivid pictures to be created in the min,
by outside influences. We laugh at tn
tale of "Jack and the Bean-stalk" now
but which of us has not had his ow,
Jack, whom he firmly believed in, ant
his own bean-stalk of the proper stout
ness and strength to support Jack as h,
climbed up? All, me! what time i
was when there were SO many kings ant
queens, fairies and giants; and wher
those terrible spOoks, too, which never
we're seen, were always coming after you
in the dark places, although they were
so shy of light and grown-up people, and
never had any power underneath the bed
clothes!
Nature being most impartial in hel
gifts, and graciously bestowing them
quite irrespectively of the worldly posi-.
ton of the recipient, blesses nearly all
children, rich and poor, with vivid fancies
This may be assured in dozen ways
Think how easily children are amused BY
tale of adventure of the widest and
most primitive kind. Examine the nur-
sery rhymes and see what tax they are
upon the powersof credulity and imagina-
tien.
1t is not surprising to find this imag-
NATIVE power coming to the surface,
| whatever station of life child may be in.
If he has to toll all day and then to 90
home, where he has nothing to do except
to keep himself out of the way-ever a
difficult feat for children-what wonder
that he turns to reading as an easy and
available form of amusement Give him
five-cent periodical, and he can at once
Danish himself into realms of gardens,
mountains, palaces, forests, caverns of
jewels-of COLLINS, genii, kings, princesses
and dragons. To meet him, there has
rushed into the market host of publica-
tons which he devours with only too
great an avidity. AS well to tell him not
to eat, not to laugh, or not to perspire, as
not to read them. The desire is as firmly
fixed in his physical construction as his
heart or his liver. Read he must, read
he will; and he reads what is closest at
hand, and most within his means, "The
Bandit of the Prairies," The Boy High
wayman," "Tom Careless, the Boy Pr
rate" and similar garbage he reads by
the hundredweight, to the depreciation of
his mind and morals.
The mischief of these periodicals lies
in their extreme badness. They are
thoroughly badly written, careless, clap
trap, catch-penny, commonplace tales.
This is sufficient to condemn them,
though they have frequently much worse
faults. 1t is enough that the good young
men are always killing some one, and
then wanting some young lady to "fy''
with them, and that the bad young men
are always assembling, or grinding their
teeth as if they would reduce them to
powder. The effect of this trash (no
matter how innocuous in itself) on the
minds of the impressionable must be
bad.
1t may be worth while, before con-
Guiding, to mention a remedy which we
have tried with some considerable sue
cess. Has it occurred to you, reader,
that the same facilities which permit
journals of the " Boy Brigand" class to
be issued at five cents a week, also enable
some of our most famous literary Gre
atoms to be brought out at similarly low
prices? 1t has occurred, at any rate, to
many publishers, and the result is the
cheap editions of some of the best stand
ard works of fiction, as also many of our
most famous poets works, which NAV be
seen at numerous bOok-stalIs and stores.
Should our lads be left to waste their
money on works of the Boy Brigand"
class, which are always extravagantly
dear in comparison to those of which we
have spoken? 1t would be quarter
we'll laid out to buy one of the copies
alluded to, and give it to any lad YOU
may know to be in the habit of reading
light literature of Il pernicious kind, and
will be worth all the lectures and scoId-
ings you could invent. He will take no
harm from genuine fiction such as I" Rob
inson Crusoe" or Don Quixotte," SIM
ply because they are good; and his mind
will be injured by "The Boy House
breaker" etc, ETC., because they arc
bad; just as he would take no harm
physically from plate of wholesome
pudding, although he would probably be
made unwell by a feed of stale pastry.
The good old standard novels and tales
of adventure were what we read our
selves as children and many of our best
modern authors, too, have enjoyed them
in their early days, and may be found
speaking and writing lovingly of them in
their later years. Kind parents and
friends put them into our hands when
we were young, and we can make slight
return by similar gifts to less carefully
nurtured wanderers on the road of life
"WITH MILICE-
Monumental sculpture seems to he
the rock upon which most artists are
wrecked; but no people have ever been
called upon to endure so much as the
English in this respect. Although
Punch ridiculed the wooden Duke of
Wellington off his porch on Hyde Park
gate, the race of such statues will not
die out, and almost the only figure il,
London which could walk naturalIy-o,
even walk at all-if it were alive, is Mr.
Story's George Peabody. An English
paper says of the recently-erected statue
of Lord Palmerston: cit suggests the