Belmont chronicle. [volume] (St. Clairsville, Ohio) 1855-1973, 1884-05-29
,at reading if? There is ALWAYS some.

illustration. This venomous reptile al
e most always carries with iu a warnin(
rattle.
Again, charge you to stand off fren
, all those books which corrupt the imag
ination and infiame the passions. [ ds
not refer now to that kind of a booE
which the villain has under his coat
, waiting for the school to be out and ther
looking both ways to see that there is nc
: policeman around the block, offers the
! book to your son on his way home. dc
T not speak of that kind of literature, but
lthat which evades the law and comes
out in a polished style and with acute
plot sounds the tecsin that rouses up al
the baser passions of the soul. Years
ago, a French lady came forth as an au.
thoress under the assumed name OF
George Sand. She smoked cigars. She
wore gentleman's apparel. She stepped
off the boands of decency. She wrote
with style ardent, eloquent, mighty in
its gloom, horrible in its unchastity
glowing in its verbiage. vivid in its por.
traiture, damning in its effects, transfer.
ring into the libraries and homes Of the
world an evil that has not even begun
to relent, and she has her copyists in all
lands. To-day under the nostrils OF
your city, there is fetid, reeking, un-
washed literature, enough to poison all
the fountains of public virtue and smite
your sons and daughters as with the
wing of a destroying angel, and it is
time that the ministers of the Gospel
blew the trumpet and rallied the forces
of righteousness all armed to the teeth
in this great battle against a depraved
literature. Why are so per cent. of the
criminals in the jails and penitentiaries
of the United States to-day under twenty
one years of age? Many Of them under
seventeen, under sixteen, under fifteen,
under fourteen, under thirteen. Walk
along one of the corridors of the Tombs
prison in New York and look for your
selves. Bad books, bad newspapers be-
witched them as soon as they got out of
the cradle. "Oh," says some one, II am
business man and | have no tims to
examine what my children read. l have
no time to inspect the books that come
into my household" If your children
we're threatened with typhoid fever
would you have time to 60 for the doc
tor? would you have time for the fu~
neral? In the presence of my God l
warn you of the fact that your children
are threatened with moral and spiritual
| typhoid, and that unless the thing be
stopped it will be to them funeral of
the body, funeral of mind, funeral of
soul-three funerals in one day.
Again, abstain from those books which
are apologetic of crime. 1t is sad thing
that some of the best and most beautiful
book bindery and some of the finest rhet-
oric have been brought to make sin at
tractiye; vice is horrible thing anyhow.
1t is born in shame aud it dies bowling
in the darkness. In this world it is
scourged with whip of scorpions, but
afterward the thunders of Gods wrath
pursue it across a boundless desert, beat
ing it with ruin and woe. When you
come to paint carnality, do not paint it
as looking from behind embroidered
curtains or through lattice of royal Sc
raglio, but as writhing in the agonies of
city hospital. Cursed be the books that
try to make imparity decent, and crime
attractive and hypocrisy nobel Cursed
he the books that swarm with libertines
and deSperadOeS, who make the brain of
the young people whirl with villainy
Ye authors who write them, ye publish
ers who print tbem, ye booksellers who
distribute them, shall be cut to pieces. il
not by an aroused community, then at
last by divine vengeance. which shall
sweep to the lowest pit of perdition all
ye murderers of soul. tell you, though
you may escape in this world, you will
be ground at last under the hoOf of eter-
nal calamities and you will be chained
to the rock and you will have the vul-
lures of despair clawing at your soul and
those whom you have destroyed will
come around to torment you and to pour
hotter Goals of fury on your head and
rejoice eteInally at the outcry of your
pain and the howl of your damnation.
"God shall wound the hairy scalp of
him that goeth on in bis trespasses"
The clock strikes midnight. A fair form
bends over a romance. The eyes flash
fire. The breath is quick and irregular.
Occasionally the color dashes to the
cheek and then dies out. The hands
tremble as though guardian spirit were
trying to shake the deadly book out of
the grasp. Hot tears fall. She laughs
with a Shrill voice that drops dead at
it's own sound. The sweat on her brow
is the spray dashed up from the river of
death. The clock strikes four and the
rosy dawn soon after begins to look thro'
the lattice upon the pale form that looks
like detained specter Of the night.
Soon in a mad house she will mistake
her ringlets for curling serpents, and
thrust her white hands through the bars
of the prison and smite her head, rub
bing it back as though to push the scalp
from the skull, shreiking, my brain my
brain~ Oh, stand off from that. Why
will you go sounding your way amidst
the reefs and warning buoys, when there
is such a vast ocean in which you may
voyage. all sail set?
There is one other thing I shall say
this morning before leave you, whether
you want to hear it or net; that is that
L consider the bad pictorial literature of
the day as most tremendous of ruin.
There is no one who can like good pic>
lures better than do. But what shall
l say to the prostitution of this art to
purposes of iniquity. These death war
rants of the soul are at every street cor
ner. They smits the vision of the young |
with pollution. Many q young man
buying copy has bought his eternal |
discontinue. There may be enough |
poison in one bad picture to poison one |
soul, and that soul may poison ten, and |
the ten fifty, and the hundred thousands, |
until nothing but the measuring line of |
eternity can tell the height and depth |
and ghastlinesS and horror of the great !
undoing. The work of death that the |
wicked author does in whole book, the |
bad engraver may do on half side of |
pictorial. Under the disguise of pure |
mirth the young maH buys one Of these
sheets. He unrolls it before his CON-
rades, amidst roars of laughter, but long
after the paper is gone, the results may
perhaps be seen in the blasted imagina-
tions of those who saw it. The queen
of death every night holds a banquet,
and these periodicals are the printed in
vitation to her guests. Alasl that the
fair brow of American art should be
blotched with this plague spot, and that