Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1878-06-10
THE TRASH OUR BOYS ARE
READING.

Our attention has been called to this
matter by circular signed by a number
of the most eminent divines and teachers
of the country. In the list of cheap,
trashy publications, with which every
news stand is decorated, particular men,
tion is made of two whose united circu-
lation is set down at 10000 copies.
They are filled with fashy illustrations
of sensational and slangy stories, and
are even less decent than the dime nov-
els with which the land is flooded. In
.Scri6saer's Monthly for March, Professor
Sumner of Yale College, has discussed
this matter fully and carefully. He
made an examination of the flash litera-
ture. and this is what he says of it:
These periodicals contain stories,
songs. mock speeches, and negro min
strel dialogues nothing else. The lit
erary material is either intensely stupid,
or spiced to the highest degree with SEN
sation. The stories are about hunting,
Indian warfare, California desperate
life, pirates, wild sea adventure, high.
waymen, crimes and horrible accidents,
horrors, (torture and snake stories) gam
blers, practical jokes, the life of vaga-
bond boys, and the wild behavior of dis
sipated boys in great cities. s. 8
When the stories nominally treat of
school-life, they say nothing of school
life. There is simply succession of
practical jokes. mischief, heroic but i'm
possible feats, fighting and horrors, but
nothing about the business of school,
any more than if the house in which the
boys live were summer boarding house.
Mr.. Sumner details at length the va
rious kinds of ''heroes" and '.heroines"
with which these fash magazines and
papers spice their stories, all more or
less depraved, and quotations are made
to show the sickenlng character of the
stuff with which our boys are ''regaled. !"
He writes:
These stories are not markedly pro-
fame, and they are not obscene. They
are indescribably vulgar. They repre-
sent boys as engaging all the time in
rowdy type of drinking. The heroes are
either staggering. vulgar swells, of the
rowdy style, or they are in the vagabond
mass below the rowdy swell. They are
continually associating with criminals,
gamblers, and low people who live by
their wits The theatre of the stories is
always disreputable. The proceedings
and methods of persons of the criminal
and disreputable classes, who appear in
the stories, are all described in detail.
A boy reader obtains theoretical and
literary acquaintance with the methods
of fraud and crime. Sometimes drunk.
enness is represented in its disgrace and
misery, but generally drinking is repre-
sented as jolly and entertaining, and
there Is no suggestion that boys who act
as the boys in these stories do ever have
to pay any penalty for it in after life
The persons who are held up to admira-
tion are the heroes and heroines of bar.
rooms, concert saloons. variety theatres,
and negro minstrel troupes.
Mr.. Sumner generalizes the views Of
life, the code of manners and morals
they teach, showing them to be false
deleterious and demoralizing in the ex
treme, and closes with the admonitory
words:
These periodicals seem to be intended
for boys from twelve to sixteen years o.
age, although they often treat of oldcl
persons. Probably many boys outgroV
them and come to see the folly and false
hood of them. 1t is impossible, however
that SO much corruption should be afoa
and not exert some influence. We say
nothing of the great harm which is done
to boys of that age, by the nervous ex
citement of reading narrowing and sen
sational stories, because the literatur
before us only participates IN that harm
with other literature of far higher pre-
tensions. But what we have said suf
fees to show that these papers poisol
boys minds with views of life which ar
so base and false as to destroy all man
illness and all chances of true success
How far they are read by boys of goo
home influences we are of course unabl
to say. They certainly are within th
reach of all. They can be easily oh
tanned and easily concealed. and it is
F question for parents and teachers hoy
far this is done. Persons under thes
responsibilities ought certainly to knoy
what the character of this literature is
FEEDING YOU'VE TURKEYS. Youn
turkeys should be fed at least five time
, daily. at morning, noon, and night, an
! between these times, for their rapi
} growth requires that food be given lii
, orally and often Of the proper kind. Mil
in its different forms, should constitut
much of the first food of young turkeys
We usually give for the first few day
bread soaked in new milk, at the sam
time giving them milk to drink. Thic