The central Presbyterian. [volume] (Richmond, Va.) 1856-1908, 1881-12-14
Suggestive.

WHAT OUR CHILDREN REAp.-Those
parents who feel as much responsibility
for the intellectual food placed before
their own children, or other peoples
children, as they do for providing whole
some meat and pure water, will appre-
ciate these extracts from the Nation.
I" Mr.. j. M. Hubbard has for some
time been protesting against the charac-
ter of the fiction supplied to children by
the Boston Public Library. In a memo
rial he presented list of about one
hundred Objectionable books circulated
Gotten in many copies) by the Library
with evidence as to their character.
The Trustees in their last annual re-
port defended their course There
upon Mr.. Hubbard, having different
ideas as to what are books of an i'm
moral influence, has published the list
1t is literary curiosity. Few
people, we imagine, were aware that
there are so many so bad books belong
ing to the literature of the last twenty
years and read in every circle of So
ciety. Unintentional bigamy, Sc
ductlon, adultery, are the subjects of a
large part of these hundred novels.
The great object of books like these.
said the Atheneuna in 1867, is to teach
immortality by presenting it in an inter-
estlng and seductive form, and by max
ing good people, who live according to
the ordinary laws of decency, appear
tame, stupid, and despicable. T.. 1t
is time for critics to speak out boldly,
and to declare in plain language what
they think of the tendencies Of these
books, and see by SO doing whether they
cannot put stop to their produc-
ton
Possibly certain repressive influence
may be produced by this massing of tes-
tlmony, which could not be expected
from single, dispersed outcries. Parents
and guardians may be induced to reassume
their disused duties, and supervise their
children s selection of books or keep them
away from the Library altogether. :.
There is certainly occasion for more
care. A great wave of French in
Huence has been sweeping over English
and has almost entirely sub
merged not merely its former prudish-
ness, which would be no great loss, but
large part of its former purity. The
spirit of the opera 6oufe has penetrated
fiction as we'll as the stage. In France
this literature of adultery is considered
to belong to the kind don't la mere ne
permaettra pas Ia lecture so fzle.' In
America, unluckily, the mothers per-
mission is not asked for her daughters
reading. One thing is certain: if
this stuff has no bad influence on the age,
then the preaching of Christianity can
have no good infuence,-the age must
be utterly unimpressionable. It is in
credible, that so much pitch should not
detile, that the tone of public feeling
should not be in the end lowered by con-
slant familiarity with such perverted
thought. The real evil is the
thoroughly unchristian, because selfish,
spirit that is in them all and the idea
which pervades almost all that we have
either read or read about, that passion is
rightly lord of all. Z. We NAV even.
confess that after reading Mr.. Hubbards
extracts, we were not so much surprised
as we had always been at the remark of
the head master of one of the Boston
schools who had given some attention to
his pupils reading: The Public Ii
brary is curse to the school chill
dren.
=. We have mentioned this pamphlet
chiefly to call to it the attention Of the
authorities Of our city and town Libraries.
1t may lead some who have been liberal
or careless in their purchases of fiction
to consider whether, after all, it is worth
while to spend any considerable part of
their limited funds in the purchase of
such rubbish as is here characterized :;
and whether, again, the public as whole
really do demand such reading.
To small library the argument derived
from the odium Of a censorship does not
apply. Even if it would like to purchase
everything, it cannot. 1t must select.
There are enough notwithstanding
good books-to use up all the income of
most town libraries. The question then
is, Shall it buy doubtful morality and un-
doubted vulgarity, and by so doing in
capacltate itself for buying wholesome
and refining literature, or shall it get the
better class Of books and have the ex-
cuse Of no funds at its service when it
Is asked to procure undesirable works ?
Mr.. Hubbard's pamphlet becomes
valuable to trustees who have not the
critical journals at hand, and who can
not decide when they have read 1t is
In an way combination of Allibone