Daily tobacco leaf-chronicle. (Clarksville, Tenn.) 1890-1895, 1891-03-09
PLAGUE OF BAD BOOKS.
CONTINUED from second Page.

slainp First OF all by the prompt and IN
exorable execution Of the law Let all good
postmasters and United States district at
torneys, and detectives and reformers CON
cert In their action 10 stop this plague.
When Sir Rowland Hill spent his life in
trying to secure cheap postage not only
for England, but for all the world and to
open the blessing of the postollice to all
honest business, and to all messages Of
. charity and kindness and affection, for
all healthful Accommodation he did
not mean to make vice easy or to Gll the
mail bags of the United States with the
scabs Of such a leprosy
1t ought not to be in the power of every
bad man who can raise one cent stamp
for circular or a two cent stamp for
letter to blast man or destroy home.
The postal service of this country must be
clean, must be kept clean, and we must all
understand that the swift retributions Of
the United States government hover over
every violation Of the letter box.
There are thousands of men and women
IL this country, some for personal gain,
some through innate deprayty, some
through spirit of revenge, who wish to
use this great avenue Of convenience and
Intelligence for purposes revengeful, sala-
cious and diabolic. Wake up the law.
Wake up all its penalties. Let every court
room on this subject be Sinai thunderous
and aflame. Let the convicted offenders
be sent for the full term to Sing Sing or
Harrisburg.
am not talking about what cannot be
done. am talking now about what is be-
ing done. A great many Of the printing
presses that gave themselves entirely to
the publication of vile literature have been
stopped or have gone into business less OBJ
noxious What has thrown off, what has
kept off the rail trains OF this country for
some time back nearly all the leprous pc
riodicalsS Those of us who have been on
the rail trains have noticed a great chaISe
In the last few months and the last year or
two. Why have nearly all those vile period
icals been kept off the rail trains for some
time back? Who effected it? These soci-
cites for the publication of railroad liter
allure gave warning to the publishers and
warning to railroad companies, and warn
ing to conductors, and warning to news
boys, to keep the internal stuff off the
trains.
Many of the cities have successfully pro
hibited the most of that literature even
has seized upon the publishers and the
dealers in impure literature, from the fact
that over u thousand arrests have been
made, and the aggregate time for which
the convicted have been sentenced to the
prison is over one hundred and ninety
years, and from the fact that about two
million of their circulars have been de-
stroyed, and the business is not as profit
able as it used to be-
THE LAWl THE LAW!
How have so many of the news stands of
our great cities been purified? How has so
much of this iniquity been baked? BY
moral suasionp Oh, no. You might as
well go into jungle of the East Indies
and pat cobra on the neck, and with pro
found argument try to persuade it that it
Is morally wrong to bite and to sting and
to poison anything. The only answer to
your argument would be an uplifted head
and hiss and sharp, reeling tooth struck
into your arteries. j ne only argument
for n cobra is a shotgun, and the only argu-
ment for these dealers in impure literature
is the clutch of the police and bean soupin
q penitentiary. The lawl The law / in
yoke TO consummate the work SO grandly
begun
Another way in which we are to drive
back this plague of Egyptian frogs is by
filling the minds of our young people with
a healthful literature. do not mean to
say that all the books and newspapers in
our families ought to be religious books
and newspapers, or that every song ought
90 be sung to the tune of cold Hun
dred." l have no sympathy with the
attempt to make the young old. / would
rather join in n crusade to keep the
young young. Boyhood and girlhood
must not be abbreviated. But there are
good books, good histories, good biogra-
phies, good works of fiction, good books Of
all styles with which we are to fill the minds
of the,young, 50 that there will be no more
room for the useless and the vicious than
there is room for chaff in bushel measure
which Is already filed with Michigan
wheat.
why arc so per cent, Of the criminals in
the jails and penitentiares of the United
States today under tWenty-one years Of
agei Many of them under seventeen, UNI
der sixteen, under fifteen, under fourteen
under thirteenY Walk along one of the
corridors of the Tombs prison in New York
and look for yourselves. Bad books, bad
newspapers bewitched them as soon ms
they got out of the cradle Beware of all
those stories which end wrong Beware
OF all those books which make the road
that ends in perdition seem to end in Par
adise. Do not glorify the dirk and the pis-
tol. Do not call tho Desperate brave or
the libertine gallant Teach our young
people that if they go down into the
swamps and marshes to watch the jaCk-o'-
lanterns dance on the decay and rotten
ness they will catch the malaria and death,
"Oh,n says some one, 81 am a business
man, and have no time to examine what
my children read | have no time to in.
spect the books that come into my house.
hold" If your children were threatened
with typhoid fever, would you have time
to 90 for the doctor? Would you have time
towatch the progress Of the disease Would
you have time for the funeral? In the
presence of my God | warn You of the fact
that your children are threatened with
moral and spiritual typhoid, and that UNI
less the thing be stopped twill be to them
funeral of body, funeral of mind, funeral
of soul. Three funerals in one day.
My word is to this vast multitude Of
young people; DO not touch, do not bor-
row, do not buy n corrupt book or cor
rupt picture. a book will decide mans
destiny for good or for evil The book you
read yesterday may have decided you for
time and for eternity, or it may be book
that may come into your possession to-
morrow.
THE POWER OF GOOD hook.
A good book-who can cNaggerate its
powerY Benjamin Franklin said that his
reading of Cotton Mather's Essays to DO
Good" in childhood gave him holy aspira-
tions for all the rest of his life, George
Law declared that a biography he read in