Mineral Point tribune. (Mineral Point, Wis.) 1869-1938, 1888-11-29
LITERARY DRAM DRINKING.
Evil Effects of Forming Taste for Light
and Exciting Reading.

xvi tHcCiS OF 4 corning a IhSte ior LiEut
and Exciting Reading
The mischief of voracious novel
reading is really much more like the
mischief of dram drinking than APP
pears at first sight, says a writer in
the Spectator 1t tends to make all
other literary nourishment intolerable
and TO SuperSede food by drink. The
voracious novel reader of to-day. as we
have said, rejects Scott because SCOTS
novels contain so much good food that
is not mere story telling. The genuine
novel reader detests whathe calls tamo
stories, stories in which the interest is
not exaggerated aud piled up ten times
as high ms the interests of ordinary
life. lie wants always TO be feeling n
thrill of excitement running through
his nerves, always TO be living in inn
agination through the concentrated
essence Of the perils of hundred adj
venturous lives. instead of toiling
calmly through the ordinary hopes and
fears of one.
No state of mind can be more un-
wholesome, because none is more cali
oulated to divert the energies from the
sort of quiet tasks to which they should
be hahitually applied, and to keen
them stretched on the tentcr hooks O.
expectation. waiting for sort of
strain which is never likely to occur,
would certainly not find mans ener-
gies any the better prepared for it for
having been worn out previously with
q long series Of imaginary oxeitements.
Tho habits Of dram drinking, il is
said, leads to fatty degeneration of the
heart. O., excessive fattening around
the heart, and weak action of the heart
in consequence. So, too, the habit of
exciting novel reading leads to fatty
degeneration of the literary mind-i.
g., 60 an unhealthy and spasmodic ae-
l.on of the imagination, aud n general
weakening of the power of entering
thoroughly into the solid interests of
real life
So far as we know the only effective
euro for this habit of literary dram
! DRINKING cure not always forth
| coming Is moral shock of some
kind which exposes tho hollowncss of
all these unreal interests and makes
them appear artificial and melodram-
attic as they actually are, That, how
ever, is n cure which ia an extremely
! painful one, almost cruel in its disillu-
sionizing power There are, we be-
lieve, some happier mortalS who can
cure themselves, as the grocers' shop
boys are said 10 be cured Of their taste
for sugar and raisinsand such dainties,
by an early surfeit of them; but that is
"A kind of cure that it tpl1es very
healthy mind 70 operate upon.
] tssI, fI.ae all Al
stroys the 2est of novel reading, It also
leaves tho mind too languid to take
eagerly TO palmer and moro whole
some food, and SO at once destroys the
pleasure taken in tho poison. and
leaves the mischief produced by it,
What oyerstimulating novels do for
the voracious reader of them is to es-
tablsh false standards Of life, false
ideas Of the sort OF emergency which
best calls out and exercises the
character, false impressions of the
discipline which strong character
| needs, and OF the mode by which that
discipline is best attained
In point Of fact, that which is most
useful to the character bears about tho
same proportion TO that which is most
! exciting in life rs the drill Of a we'll
disciplined army bears to the porious
crises Of great battles. The yoraoious
novel reader learns about as much
that is useful for tho great crises OF
his life by his novel reading as tho raw
recruit who should begin with Il series
of tho most perlous battles in great
campaign would learn by that most in
appropriate of discipines a discipline
which would probably teach him only
I to run away.
The best way TO prevent the disease
Of novel reading from catching hold OF
the young is 20 instill in them, If pos.
siblc, an early craving for more solid
| food, and to instll it SO thoroughly as
to make them dislike the merely diet
Of unadulternted fiction.