The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1884-05-24
UNHEALTHY LITERATURE.
Unclean journalism the Nations Greatest
Cause.-The Pernicious Novels Ofthe Times.


allsm. 1t has its victims in all occupations ana
departments 1t has helped to fill insane asy-
1umS, and pententiaries, and aims houses, ana
dens of shame. The bodies of this infection lie
in the hospitals and in the graves, while their
souls are Being tossed over into a lost eternity,
an avalanche of horror and despair. The Lon
don plague was nothing to it, That counted It's
victims by thousands but this modern pest mas
already shoveled it's millions into the eharnel-
house of the morally dead. The longest raj
train that ever ran over the Erie OF hudson
track was not long enough or large enough 10
carry the beastliness and putretactlon when
have gathered up in the bad books and newspa-
pers of this land in the last twenty
years. Now it is amidst such cir
cumstances that put the questions
of overmastering importance to you and your
families: What can we do to aoate this Pesn
lenceg What books and newspapers shall we
read You see group them together "A news
paper is only book in a swifter and more porta-
BILE shape, and the same rules which Apply 10
bookreading will apply to newspaper-readlng'
What shall we read Shall our minds be the re-
ceptacle of everything that an author has mind
to write4 Shall there be no distinction between
the tree of life and the tree of death Shall we
stoop down and drink out of the trough which
the wickedness of men has filed with pollution
and shame2 Shall we mire in impurity and
chase fantastic will-othe-wisps across the
swamps, when we might walk in the blooming
gardens of Godl Oh, no. For the sake of our
present and everlasting welfare we must make
and intelligent and Christian choice.
Standing as we do chin deep in fictitious htera-
ture the first question that many of the young
people are asking me Isl Shall we read novels!'
l reply there are novels that are pure, good,
Christian, elevating to the heart and ennobllng
to the life. But have still further to say that
l believe threefourths of the novels in this day
are haneful and destructive to the last degree.
A pure work of fiction is history and poetry COM
bined. 1t is history of things around us with
the licenses and the assumed names of poetry.
The world can never repay the debt which 1t
owes to such fictitious writers as hawthorne,
and Mackenzie, and Lander, and Hunt, and
others, whose names are familiar to all The
follies of high life were never better exposed
than by Hiss Edgeworth. The memories OF the
past were never more faithfully embalmed
than in the writings of Walter Scott Cooper
novels are BEAUTIFULLY redolent with the
breath of the seaweed and the air Of the
American forest. Charles Kingsley has smit-
ten the morbdness of the world and led great
many to appreciate the poetry of sound health,
strong muscles and fresh air. Thackeray did
grand work 10 carricaturine the pretenders to
gentility and high blood. Dickens has built his
own monument in his books, which are an ever
lasting plea for the poor and the anathema of
injustice Now, / say books like these, read at
right times and read in proportion with other
books, can not help but be ennobling and purify
ing.
But, alas for the loathsome and impure litera-
ture that has come upon this country in the
shape Of novels, like freshet, overfiowing all
LIE BANKS Oh 06CenEY anu GOHainOn SellSe lticy
are coming from some of the most celebrated
publishing houses in the country. They are
coming with the recommendation of some of our
religious newspapers. They lie on your center
table to curse your children and blast with their
internal fires generations unborn. You find
these books in the desk of the school miss. IN
the trunk of the young man. in the steamboat
cabin and on the table of the hotel reception
room. You see light in your ehilds room late
at night You suddenly go in and say: What
are You doing" Il am reading What are
you readingl" "a book You look at the book;
il lis a bad book. Where did you get it9' Il
borrowed it" Alas! There are always them
abroad who would like to loan your son or daugh-
ter a bad book. Everywhere everywhere, is
unclean literature. l charge upon it the destruc-
ton of ten thousand immortal souls, and bid
you this morning to wake up to the magnitude
of them. 1t is a sad thing that
some of the best and most beautiful bookbind-
cry and some of the finest rhetoric have been
brought to make sin attractive. Vice is horTi-
bic thing anyhow. 1t is born in shame, and it
dies bowling in the darkness. In this world it
is scoarged 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 seragio, but as writhing
in the as9nies of a city hospital. Cursed be the
books that try to make impurity decent and
crime attractive and hypocrisy noble. Cursed be
peradoes who make the brain of the young peo-
pie whirl with villainy Ye authors who write
them we Publishers who print them, We book
sellers who distribute them, shall be cut to
pieces, if not by an aroused community, then at
last by divine vengeance, which shall sweep
to the lowest pit of perdition all ye murderers
of souls.
There is one other thing shall say this morn
ing before leave you whether you want to hear
it or not that is, that consider the bad pictorial
literature of the day as most tremendous for
ruin. There is no one who can like good pictures
better than 1 do. But what shall l say to the
prostitution Of this art to purposes of iniGuityl
These death warrants of the soul are at every
street corner. They smite the vision OF the
young with pollution. Many young man buy
ing a copy mas 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 hundreds 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 a whole
book the bad engraver may do on half side of
pictorial Under the disguise of pure mirth the
young man buys one of these sheets. He un-
rolls it before his comrades amidst roars of
laughter, but long after the paper is gone the
results may perhaps be seen in the blasted imag-
nations Of those who saw it The queen of
death every night holds banquet, and
these periodicals. are the printed invita-
ton to her guests. Alas, that the fair brow of
american arU SnOulu De DiOlcIltu Will IlS Prague
spot and that philanthropists, bothering them
selves about smaller evils should lift up no
united and vehement voice against this great
calamity! Yonng man, buy not this moral
strychnine for your soul! Pick not up this nest
of coiled adders for your pocket Patronize no
news stand that keeps them. Have your room
bright with good engravings, but for these
ubiquitous pictorials have not one wall not one
bureau, not one pocket. A man is no better
than the picture he loves to look at. If your
eyes are not pure your heart can not be. One
can guess the character of man by the kind of
pictorial he purchases When the devil fails to
get man to read a bad book he sometimes sue
feeds in getting him to look at bad picture.
When Satan goes a-fshing he does not care
whether it is a long line or a short line if he
only draws ms T1ctl ma M have this
by which you may judge in regard to
books and newspapers, then 1 have done
cnIrothi1nfr Of IuhinI shnl 10