The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1881-11-16
Pernicious Reading for Young Peo-
pie.
It's cause-Its Tendency-Its Cure.
IA paper read by Rev. +. E. Clark before the POI
land CONGREGATIONAL Clubl

The other day friend sent me a copy o.
Puck and directed my attention to a cartoon
| on the hrst page. For the benefit of those oi
you who have not seen this graphic picture
let me describe it;
An infant, apparently some six or eight
months old, sits in cradle, one hand grasps q
huge bowie knife, the other bull dog
| revolver, across his knees lies shot gun,
| while into various crevices of the cradle other
| knives and pistols are thrust. In the infants
mouth is placed tube through which he
draws nourlshment from huge bottle labelled
dime novels, half dime stories, cent papers,
&c. A wild and lurid light CLEANS from the
infants eyes, his tow hair stands on end with
| excitement, and a fierce and implacable look
| settles al ound the corners of his mouth. The
excirlng causes of this preternatural ferocity
| lie scattered about on the floor, labelled,
| buccaneers of the Battery" "Ike the Indian
Killer" Bloody Ben, 1.-The Pirates of the
Passaic'', &C., &c In short, this I'm ant In
| dian Exterminator" il the cradle had been
nourished on such food as made his hair stand
on end, and his fingers naturally clutch the
| bowie knife aud the revolver There is a
startling truth hidden in this grotesqae car
toon. The very babies in their cradles have
| this excit1ng srniciouS literature rained upon
| them As they draw pap from the nursing
| bottle, they suck In blood and thuuder from
| the dime novel; Instead of the Three Bears,
| the child of to-day reads about the Five
| skulls" Instead of Dick Wilmington and his
| Cau", he reads about s'Dick the DESTROYER" !"
| instead Of cinderella and her golden slip
| pers,r he reads about the "Gir Trailer" or
| .sWild Nell on the ScaffoldD The spirit of
| that cartoon has its counterpart ia ten thou
| sand households all our country over; that
scene is being enacted in every city and viii
| lage of our Land. 1t is hardly an exaggeration
to make the victim of these worthless novels a
tow-headed baby in his cradle.
Bat what is the nature of these publications,
do you ask? Let me give you an outline of
one of them and er uno disco on1nes This
one, which is the only one / have read, is called
"The Gpsy Boys Vengeance" It is the only
one have read through, but, from hasty
glance at many of them / am convinced that
it is fair sample OF the lot: it certainly
does not go beyond the average in blood card
ling vlllainy. In the first chapter of the Clip
sy Boys Vengeance, a ro5ber, Cartcuche by
name, runs off with the heroine of the story a
beautiful girl of high family, and the robber
strikes q subordinate actor in the story to the
floor with his clenched fist. In the second
chapter a wild pursuit of the robber, who es-
capes in hack, results in the shooting of the
hackman and the arrest of the robber The
third chapter is taken up with the walls of q
noble lady, and with her efforts to induce a
young gypsy boy to kill and thus pnt out of the
way witness against her chastity. In the
fourth chapter the robber, by the aid of his
wife, escapes from prison, and on his way out,
by way of diversion, kills man who is in the
passage way. In the fifth, a hand to hand
fight between the two principal char
scters is rehearsed In the sixth, the robber
kills the warden of the prison and
three guards In the eighth the robber dis
CARDS his wife, who had saved his life many
times, and takes up with new attachment, in
the meanwhile nearly killing the first. In the
tenth, seven or eight policemen meet and are
conveniently disposed of and as many more
robbers have their throats cut. Evidently as the
plot thickens the dramatis persona are becom-
ing too numerous, and so the author takes the
shortest way to get rid of them and freely uses
the knife and pistol upon his heroes. In this
same chapter, besides numbering sixteen men
aud throwing one old woman into the mire,
we are treated Co two fierce fights in both of
which the robbeF is victorious. In the eleventh
chapter we enter a robbers cave rich with
treasure, and are conducted by a secret passage
into the heart of Paris In the twelfth the old
woman who was thrown into the water
again comes upon the stage and is this time
killed out and out; q naughty Spaniard is also
run through with sword, and the heroine is
shot through the heart and the robber has
bullet neatly lodged in IN his back. Iu the
fifteenth aud last chapter the robber is tor
tnred and then killed by being broken on
the wheel, the haughty Spaniard is killed off
IN battle and, there being nobody left to Kill
with one or two unimportant exceptions) the
story naturally comes to an end. Thus, in this
short story, there are two cases of adultery, one
eiopemeut, nine oloody fights and twenty
eight murders. This, my friends, is sample,
and fair sample, of what our boys and girls
have thrust into their hands from the time
they are able to spell out their b, abs and ba,
bas.
DO not tell me that am advertising this
stuff by calling attention to it or by giving all
outline of one of these stories 1t is impossible
to advertise it more extensively than II Is adver-
tised at present. Ii you do not know OF It. you,
brethren and fathers, you, grave and reverend
seigniors ars-the only ones who do not know of
it, If y0u are ignorant. your boys and girls are
not. They have the advertisements of these
papers aud books thrust into their hands as
they come out of school, they find them on the
doorsteps of your houses as they come home
from play, they pick up the flyer telling them
about these stories, borne about everywhere on
the wings of the wind, they read the flaming
posters on every dead wall, describing IN glow
ing terms what the Boys of New York has to
tell them; their eyes are attracted at dozen
shop windows by pictures which have horri-
BILE fascination and which often border on the in
decent and are suggestive of impurity II they are
notswholly vile and corrupt1ng. With these odds
against them, the children OF to-day are begin
ming the battle of life. The Devil IS attacking
the citadel of their souls in its weakest part
and by appealing to their imagination and
their love of excitement and adventure he is
seeking to undermine the foundations OF man
hood aud womanhood.
This paper is not resume OF sermon
which preached on this subject some weeks
ago, nor is it intended to cover the same
ground but let me allude to one or TWO facts
which / then collected. There are 13 places IN
our city where this trash IS sold. On the coun-
ter of one of these stores counted 81 different
periodicals, for boys alone, of this exciting,
trashy, worthless sort, of which the Gipsy
Boys Vengeance, just alluded to, IS fair
sample. At a low estimate there are at least
12,000 hahitual readers of this stuff In our city,
of whom 5000 are undoubtedly young people.
One firm has already published 2OS OF these
miserable volumes, which retail for tive cents
each; another publisher announces 20l, and
still another 175, and every week adds one
more to the long lists of dynamite literature
which these firms send out. There are scores
Of publishing houses engaged in this business;
three of them alone have published 670 vol
umes within a very few months. Can you es-
innate the harm, that, combined, they are ac-
complshing?
what are the tendencies, what is its cure. Tie
causes of any such malady are always more or
less complicated and obscure. We can 1ali
back on original sin and Inherited corruptlon
aud the transgression of Adam, to re sure, to
account for the assduity of publishers in pur-
chasing this mentalInourishment and the avidity
with which our children swallow 1t; but we
can account for it more Immediately and spe-
cifically by considering it a reaction In part
from the stited stiffness and prosiness OF 1uven-
lie literature in the past All departments OF
literary effort have suffered from this extreme
reaction from the pro mess of the past.
Pulpit literature suffers with all other kinds.
Instead of preaching long ana palhIuI
sermons concerning the freedom OF
the will and foreordination aud delug-
ing his audience with mediaval the
oiogy, certain class of cergymen of to-day
have swung over to the other extreme and
preach about the ''Speckled Hen," or "Old
bonnets with new trimmings" or Boston
turned inside out" The minister OF this class
announces his subject as "Enoch, or the great
Pedestrian or "What Jonah found III the
Whale" or breaches to the village base ball
club from the text, "Where are the Miner
Ii he is an atheist he is of the Ingersoll type;
not ponderous, weighty and lengthy In his
arguments like Hume and Gibbon and Vol
taire. but bright sparkling, frothy, sensational,
like the defender of the Star Route thieves. be
sets his audience into ''roars of laughter, and
elicits applause and creates sensations by
detailing the mistakes of Moses. or tickies them
by the merest froth of nonsense concerning
ghosts skulls. His ignorance, exposed at hum
dred points, and his logic destroyed, IL makes no
difference, he goes on making people laugh
and eliciting ssthunders of applause the same
as ever If the modern man of letters chances
not to be a parson or an athestic lecturer, but
writer of felton, he no longer traces the staid
and decorous life of sir Charles Grandson or
the loves of Clarissa or the quiet, every day
existence of the good Vicar of Wakefield, but
must treat his readers to at least one good ship
wreck or savory case of adultery, or at all
events to q ghastly murder. He knows that II
he does not bring in something OF this sort his
lIrEn fEnA