The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1891-03-18

II =
to me an infamous book. He would loan
it only fifteen minutes and then / had to
give 1t back; but that book has haunted
me like specter ever since. / have in
agony of soul, on my knees before God
prayed that he would obliterate from my
soul the memory OF it; but l shall carry
the damage of it until the day OF my
! death" The assassin of Sir William Rus
| sell declared that he got the inspiration
for his crime by reading what was then a
new and popular novel, Jack Sheppard"
Homers "Iiiad" made Alexander the war
rior. Alexander said so. The story of
| Alexander made julius Cesar and Charles
| XII. both men of blood. Have you in
your pocket, or in your trunk, or in your
desk at business, a bad book, a bad picture,
a bad pamphlet? In Gods name / warn
YOU to DESTROY it,
Another way in which we shall fight
back this corrupt literature and kill the
frogs of Egypt is by rolling over them the
Christian printing press, which shall give
plenty OF healthful reading to all adults.
All these men and women are reading
men and women. What are you reading?
Abstain from all those books which, while
thew have some good things about them,
have also an admixture of evil. You
have read books that had two elements in
them-the good and the bad. Which
stuck to you? The badl The heart of
most people is like sieve, which lets the
small particles of gold fall through, but
keeps the great cinders. Once in while
there is a mind like loadstone which,
plunged amid steel and brass filings, gath
ers up the steel and repels the brass. But
it is generally just the opposite. II you
attempt to plunge through a fence
OF burrs TO get one blackberry, you
will get more burrs than blackberries.
You cannot afford to read bad book,
however good you are. You say: THE
influence is insignificant" | tell YOU that
the scratch OF pin has sometimes pro-
duced the lockjaw. Alas, If through Curl
ositv, as many do, you pry into an evil
book, your curiosity is AZ dangerous as
that of the man who would take O torch
into a gun-powder mill merely to see
whether it would really blow up or not.
In menagerie man put his arm through
the bars of black !eopard's cage. The
animals hide looked SO sleek and bright
and beautiful. He Just stroked once. The
monster seized him, and he drew forth
hand torn, and mangled, and bleeding.
On, touch not evil even with the faintest
stroke! Though it may be G ossy and
beautiful touch it not, lest you pull forth
your soul torn and bleeding under the
clutch of the black leopard. "But," you
say, chow can / find out whether book
is good or bad without reading ?? There
is always something suspicious about
bad book. Inever knew an exception
something suspicious in the index or style
of illustration. This venomous reptile al
most always carries warning rattle.
The clock strikes midnight. \ fair
form bends over a romance. The eyes
fash fire. The breath is quick and irreg-
ular. Occasionally the color deshes to the
cheek and then dies out. The hands
tremble as though a guardian spirit were
trying to shake the deadly book out OF her
grasp Hot tears fail. She laughs with
shrill voice that drops dead at its own
sound. The sweat on her brow is the
spray dashed up from the river of death.
The clock strikes four, and the rosy dawn
soon after begins to look through the lat
tice upon the pale form that looks like
detained specter of the night. Soon in a
mad house she will mistake her ringets
for curling serpents and thrust her white
hand through the bars of a prison, and
smite her head, rubbing it back as though
to push the scalp from the skull, shrek
ing: my brain my brain!' Oh, stand off
from that Why will you go sounding
your way amid the reefs and warning
buoys, when there is such vast ocean in
which you may voyage, all sail set?"
We see so many books we do not I'M
derstand what book is. Stand it on end.
Measure it, the height of it, the depth of
it, the length of it, the breadth of it. You
cannot do it. Examine the paper and
estimate the progress made from the time
of the impressions on clay, and then on
to the bark of trees, and from the bark OF
trees to papyrus, and from papyrus TO the
hide of wild beasts, and from the hide
OF wild beasts, on down until the
miracles of our modern paper manufac-
tories, and then see the paper, white and
pure as an infants soul waiting for Gods
inscription A book Examine the type
of it. Examine the printing of it and see
the progress from the time when Solon's
laws were written on oak planks and
Hesiod's poems were written on tables of
lead, and the Siniatic commands were
written on tables of stone, on down to
Hoes perfecting printing-press. A book It
took all the universities of the past, all
the martyr fires, all the civilizations, all
the battles, all the victories, all the de-
feats, all the glooms, all the brightnesses,
all the centuries to make it possible. A
book 1t is the chorus of the ages-it is
the drawing-room in which kings and
queens and orators and poets and histo-
rams and philosophers come out to greet
you. Ii worshipped anything on earth
/ would worship that. If l burned in
cense to any idol, would build an altar
to that. Thank God for good books,
healthful books, inspiring books, Chris
tian books books of men, books of wo-
men, book of God. 1t is with these good
books that we are to overcome corrupt
literature. Upon the frogs swoop
these eagles. depend much for the over
throw of iniquitous literature upon the
mortality of books. Even good books have
hard time to live. Poiybius wrote forty
books; only five of them left. Thirty
books of Tacitus have persisted. Twenty
books of Pliny have persisted. Livy wrote
140 books; only thirty-ive of them remain.
Kschylus wrote 100 dramas; only seven
remain. Euripides wrote over 100; only
nineteen remain. Varro wrote the BIZ
ographies of over 700 great Romans. All
that wealth OF biography has persisted. If
good and valuable books have such
struggle to live, what must be the fate of
these that are diseased and corrupt and
blasted at the very start? They will die as
the frogs when the Lord turned back the
plague. The work OF Characterization will
go on until there will be nothing left but
good books, and they will take the SUI
premacy of the world. May you and l
live 20 saa ha iilt,ctriorc 1avt