Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1889-04-13

little or no restrainst is put upon the
young as to what they may read-that
this is true is regretable, but the fact can
not be denied. Whittier is rigid; he
would have the writers of the day who
cater TO general reading produce nothing
that will unduly excite the imagination of
youth, or pander to the grosser passions OF
the young. Whittier writes to the Herald
saying:
Literature and srt should be moral. There is
no real beauty apart from purity. 1 hope the
time is far distant when the language which
Taine puts into the mouth OF English speaking
people shall be DO longer true: I'VE are prac
teal, and we would not have literature corrupt
practical life. We believe in the family. and
we would not have literature paint the passions
which aSSail it,"
1t IS noticeable, however, that number
of authors writing to the Herald on the
subject, contend that the proper person to
guard the young against literature that
might affect them badly are the parents
and guardians. They say, "If youth can
not stand the realistic, then youth must
get out of the way" OF this class are
Rider Haggard, Ella Wheeler Wilcox,
Mrs. Atherton, and Julian Hawthorne.
Now both of these classes may be right, in
degree The writer should not be limited
to that extent that he cannot treat of life
as it is, of man as he is found in all condi-
TONS But the writer need not bring his
treatment down to the level of the brutal
and vulgar, nor do as does Mrs. Anterior
and lola, make his text so suggestive in
its realism and SO vivid in its color that it
becomes an excitant, raising fury of pas
sion without addressing any restraining
moral sentiment. So, too, on the other
hand, the parent should exercise censor
ship over what his child reads, and not let
food for adults be fed to babes But here
the difficulty arises-he is keener watch
man than most parents, and must have
more time at leisure than the average
guardian of youth, who can withhold his
charges from access to the book, news and
other literature of the day. 1t follows
that there is an obligation upon the author
that he cannot escape by throwing all re-
sponsibility upon the parents. Charles
Dudley Warner comes near to the truth
when he says:
The middle course is generally right in life.
It is impossible TO draw hard and fast lines as to
fiction. There are many things in nature which
the artist should not paint and exhibit. Why
should the novel be like the secret cabinet in
Naples? There are many things about which
reasons? But while pruriency should be
avoided. prudery and false modesty are also to
be stunned. We want virile fiction, dealing
with real passions, and not an emasculated
view of human nature adapted to the nursery
There is abundant scope for this in pure and
elevating novel.
George Parsons Lathrop writes within
the bounds of wisdom also when he says
that the extreme of unreserve is unwhole-
some, but SO also is the extreme of super
sensitiveness:
All the elements and passions in human ma
ture should be dealt with frankly, yet under
certain limitations of pure mindedness, high and
useful aims and true delicacy. But true deli
cacy does not consist in a shamefaced silence
and evasion, which often suggest more than a
healthy and properly restrained outspokenness
can.
And Sidney Luska lays out true course
when he says:
The spirit is everything. Write of mans e'e-
mental passions in moral spirit, and you will
pattern of his waist coat in spirit OF frivolity
and you will write what he were better off with
out. The spirit is everything. To constrain
novelists to write tirgtribus puerisque is simply
to tether art