The Vancouver independent. (Vancouver, W.T. [Wash.]) 1875-1910, 1877-04-20
The Independent.
FRIDAY, APRIL 20, 1877.
Shun Evil Publications.


magazines and bad publications of all
descriptions if You would have
healthy sentiments, pure morals and
happy thoughts. This is one of the
most important considerations for all
people. No boy or girl, who has not
had deal of training in that regard by
the watchful parent, guardien, or teach
er, is capable of selecting his or her
own reading matter with that judge
ment which is necessary to guard
against that most inSidious and subtle
of all evils, the bad book. Parents, if
your children have arrived at the age
when their developing minds demand
reading, look sharp after what they read.
Don't forget to make it your business to
supervise their conduct in this respect.
A neglect of your duty at this age may
become the beginning point of sinful
career, alike Obstructive of their happi.
ness and your honor.
AT the present day there are more
seeds of moral depravity to be found in
vicious publications than in almost any
other department of Satan's great lazar
house of sin. A vicious populace
craving such physical and mental food
as is congenial to depraved bodies and
souls, is being pandered by class of
writers, whose corrupt ideas are only
equalled by the ingenuity and plaus-
Utility with which those ideas are
grouped and set forth tor the delectation
ofthose tho read them. In these DAYS of
printing and publishing, and the conse-
quent multiplication Of books and other
forms of literature, there is a fearful re-
sponsibility resting with every parent,
whose boys and girls have arrived at
the reading age. Many writers have a
peculiar faculty of dressing up foolish
fashions and customs, sinful habits and
wrong ideas of life generally, in smooth
and polite language, thus making those
things which are not only sinful in their
tendencies, but actually sinful in them
selves, appear plausible and right In
this guise, ridiculous fashions aud silly
customs are recommended to the youth,
engendering trifling, instead of seri-
GUS and sensible view of many of the
most important duties of life. This
class of literature does more harm than
the grosser type of publications which
do not attempt to HIDE the cloven hoof
behind the garb of respectability; for
they enter places, and 60 into hands
of the better sort, thus corrupting the
the very fountain of the worlds
purest morality. 1t requires good
sense and keen judgment nowadays,
on the part of parents and others in the
selection of reading matter for the youth,
to properly draw the line between the
innocent and helpful, and the frivolous
and hurtful. The great tendency to-
ward sensations of all classes prompts
the publication, in newspapers, of the
horrible details of crime; the telegraph
wires are every day loaded down with
them, and such news is eagerly sought
after and devoured by the masses of
people everywhere. This sensational.
ism is ruinous to good taste and destruc-
tive to virtue, because it so often sup
plants the desire for mental food of a
more solid character. There is need
for Q reform in this matter. Suppose
Mr.. did shoot his wife, brain
child or too and then blow out his own
brains. why herald the sickening de-
tails to all the world? Have such reci-
tails an ennobling tendency Out with
the sickening sensationalism and give
NJ sober thought, and news fit to be
read, or give US none. Parents look
iuto the matter.
The following specific charge against
certain publications, is clipped from