The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1890-09-28
PRURIENCY IN POETRY.
What the Principals in Some Of the
Brooklyn schools Have Found,
EAn,a he Oh LID nI.,h,u I.ua.1

Brooklyn schools Have Found,
From the PHILADELPHIA Record
Doctor" said a lady to old Samuel
johnson, 81 am glad to see that you have
not put any naughty words in your diction-
ary." Madame" replied the surly old doc
tor, II am sorry to see that you have been
looking for them" This same criticism
might with equal propriety be applied to
the "unco guld" people of to-day, who,
with an eye as keen as a hawks and q scent
as faultless as that of fox-hound, follow
up every trail which they think will lead to
the discovery of somsthing prurient in art
or literature, and pluck the flowers of
rhetoric and poetry to pieces to find if
maggoe or a worm be hiding in the petals.
The city of Brooklyn is the latest place
to furnish an illustration Of this excessive
prudery, some of the school principals
being the offenders. 1t appears that one of
the readers which is used in the public
schools of Brooklyn con aims Longfellow's
poem, The Building of the Ship" and
these pedagogues have discovered that there
are some wicked passages in it--so wicked,
In fact, that they have asked the superin-
tendent of public instruction to Danish it
from the list Of studies. The following
lines, describing the launch of the ship,
we're marked as the most Objectionable:
ElOVoS-S0e
The thrill of life along her keel,
And, spurning with her foot the ground
With one exulting, joyous bound
She leaps into the oceans arms!
And 10 from the assembled crowd
There rose a shout prolonged and loud,
That to the ocean seemed to say:
Take her, o bridegroom, old and gray,
Take her to thy protecting arms
with all her youth and all her charmsm
How beautiful she is! How fair
She lies within those arms, that press
Her form with many soft caress
OF tenderness and watchful care!
It is creditable however, to the good
sense of the members of the BOARD of edu-
cation that they have paid no heed to this
silly protest, ana that a poem which allie
gorically pictures the strength of our union
of states may still incite the budding mind
to open to its beauties, and inspire emotions
of pride and patriotism
1t would scarcely be possible to treat
such a matter seriously were it not that
there is, on almost every side growing
tendency on the part of would-be moral
lists to exercise q censorship over things
which have delighted the purest and most
cultured men and women. 1t is not so long
since the trustees of a museum in an Ohio
town which possessed some plaster casts
from the antique robed Venus in a Mother
Hubbard wrapper and tricked out the
Apollo Belvidere in a flannel shirt aud blue
sash, making him look like Speaker r eed
counting quorum. This cansorious spirit
is invading even the region of speech. The
boarding school described, if we remember
rightly, by Thackeray-where the Young
ladies were instructed not to cross their
TENDERS" the word 'kneesn not being
permissible-was not such great exaggera-
ton after all. Our homely and vigorous
Anglo Saxon speech is threatened with
emasculation; our colleges are to have
"prudes for proctors, dowagers for deans -
our picture galleries are to be robbed of
their choicest treasures, and we are to be at
the mercy of a Notwithstanding crew of
reformers and informers, who would blot
out everything that is noble and beautiful
in art and literature. How they could ever
have existed in the lost Eden.
which has been accepted by all ages
as type of innocency. passes
comprehension. Their grimaces are re-
pellant and their antics nauseating: and
In contemplating them We are constrained
TO cry out, with King Lear: "Give me an
ounce of civet. good apothecary, to sweetea
my imagination"
1t is rather curious, by the way that the
hypercritical rurists vino have sought to
emasculate Longfellow's beautiful poem
should have failed to note for expurgation
this striking description of the lofty trees
used as the ships masts;
These captive kings, so straight and tall,
To be shorn OF the streaming hair,
And, naked and bare
To feel the stress and the strain
or the wind and the reeling main.