The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1885-04-22

telling is working its way. We do not
hesitate to affirm that there are books
exposed for sale in the present day
which are doing the devils work just
as efficiently as the gin bottle, and yet
how few of our social philanthropists
have the courage to lift up their voice
against the perils of the former, al
though so unremitting in their attacks
upon the drink. The truth is that peo-
pie, and especially heads of families,
are growing very lax as to what their
sons and daughters read; and yet, when
the marks of moral deterioration are
apparent, they cannot understand where
their children learned their bad man
ners. But had they opened the covers
of the volumes which lay in their bed
rooms, and were eagerly read in their
hours of idleness, the seeds might have
been easily recognized which have pro-
duced such evil fruit, to their sorrow as
parents. 1t was not always so. Years
ago, within the reach of the memory
of the middle-aged, father would ask
with proper authority what book was
the companion of his son, and, as a
rule, in those times the Christian parent
strongly condemned fiction. But the
age has changed since then, and few of
even our best and strictest religious
people would care to object in toto to
novel, and as imaginative writing is
now the order of the day, it only re-
mains for us to act wisely and courage
ously in making distinctions between
the good and the bad, the permissible,
and even admirable and useful, and the
disallowed and perncious fiction of the
day. We often speak of books written
with purpose, and many a precious
seed of truth and uprightness has been
sown by the hand of the skillful weaver
of a life story. But turning over the
leaves of at least half the novels of the
circulating library, we are constrained
to ask what purpose and end can the
authors have in writing them. The
answer is, doubtless, that they are
written to please, to amuse an idle hour,
to relax the mind. Yet this is not all.
There are thousands of people who
never enter theater, who know by eX-
perience nothing of the screaming farces
and the sensational dramas of the stage,
and yet within the leaves of three
volume novel see and enjoy the same
thing, perhaps even more realistically
placed before them. In the hands of a
gifted writer language may present to
the reader such pictures as will thrill
him with emotion. and create in the
very depths of his being sensations
which are quite as fatal to conscience
and morality as anything embodied by
the histrionic art; so that while some
may flatter themselves that they are
not theater-goers, they are receiving all
the hurt which is associated with those
places of amusement by dwelling upon
the scenes and conversations of the
bad novel. OF course in this relation
badness is term of varied application
and, as rule, a man who is not con-
trolled by Christian principles cares lit
tie about the badness of an amusement,
provided that it answers its end to him.
To the carnal mind and the unregen-
crate heart the spice of unchaste and
immoral sentiment is not unwelcome, at
any rate; if persisted in, such reading
rapidly ingratates itself into the taste
and feeling. Knowing. therefore, that of
such character is great deal of the
fiction of to-day, we appeal to the
mothers on behalf of their girls, and to
fathers on behalf of their boys, to take
] tillS UutSllOH lulO StIlOUS consideration.
Many mother will not send her daugh-
ter to boarding-school lest some evil
association should spoil her innocency;
but we implore them TO watch lest the
devil steals in between the pages of a
book. To terrible extent the book
makes the character. What does my
child read? is a question quite as impor-
tant as what company he keeps. We
would close, however, with an earnest
appeal to all Christians to consider
this question in its relation to the Word
of God. Why do so few read the Bible
from Monday to Saturday? What else
do they read? The fact is, a promis-
cuous reader of cheap novels has no
care, not so much as a straw, for the
revealed counsel of God, which must
condemn them. Let us make the Bible
our best book, and refuse to admit any
competitor which would rob us of our
interest and love for it, or destroy our
communion with its Author, our Lord -
Christian Commonwealth.