Fisherman & farmer. [volume] (Edenton, N.C.) 1887-19??, 1891-03-27

XII both men OF blood. Have you in yout
pocket, or in your trunk or In your desk ar
business a bad book, a bad picture, bad
pamphlet: In Gods name L warn you 20 de-
stroy il.
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 wo-
men. What are you reading: Abstain from
all those books which, while they had some
good things about them, had also an adulix-
ture of evil. You have read books that had
two elements in them-the good and the bad
Which stuck to you? The bad. The heart
of most people is ike sieve, which lets the
small particles of gold fall through but
keeps the great cinders- Once in while
there is a mind like a loadstone which,
plunged amid steel and brass filings, gathers
up the steel and repels the brass. But it is
generally the opposite. Ii you attempt to
plunge through fence of burrs to get one
blackberry, you will get more burrs tnan
blackberrieS.
You cannot afford to read a bad book,
however good you are. You say, 1.-The in
fuence is insignificant" l tell you that the
scratch of pin has sometimes produced lock-
jaw. Alas, if through curiosity, as many do,
you pIy into an evil book, your curiosity is
as dangerous as that of the man who would
take torch into gunpowder mill merely
to see whether it would really blow up or
not. In a menagerie a man put his arm
through the bars of black leopards cage.
The animals hide looked so sleek and bright
and beautiful. He just stroked it once. The
monster seized him, and he drew forth hand
torn and mangled and bleeding.
Oh, touch not the evil even with the faint
est stroke! Though it may be glossy md
beautiful, touch it not lest you pull forth
your soul torn and bleeding under the clutch
Of the black leopard. But" you say, ''how
can find out whether book is good or bad
thing suspicious about bad book. I never
knew an Notwithstanding suspicious in
the index or style Of illustration. This VEN
omous reptile almost always carries a war;
ing rattle
bends over a romance. The eyes flash
fire. The breath is quick and irregular.
Occasionally the color dasheS to the cheek,
and then dies out. The hands tremble as
though a guardian spirit were trying to
shake the deadly book out Of the grasp. Hot
tears fall. She laughs with a shrill voice
that drops dead at its own sound. The
sweat on her brow is the spray dashed up
from the river OF death. Inc CLOCK strikes
-four, and the rosy dawn soon after begins to
look through the lattice upon the pale form
that looks like a detained specter of the
might. Soon IL madhouse she will mistake
her ringlets for curling serpeants, aud thrust
her white hand through the bars Of the
prison, and smite her head, rubbing it back
,shrieking: my brain! my brainT Oh,
stand off from that! Why will you go
sounding your way amid the reefs and warm
ing buoys, when there is such vast ocean
in which you may voyage, all sail set?
We see so many books we do not under
stand what a book is. Stand it on end.
Measure 1.-THE height Of it, the depth Of it,
the length of it, the breadth of it. You can
not do it. Examine the paper and estimate
the made from the fjToa of tho i'm.
pressions clay, and then on the bark of
trees, and from the bark o. 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 man
ufactories, and then see the paper, white and
pure an infants soul, waiting for Gods in
scription.
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 bookl It took all the universities of the
past, all the martyr fires all the civilizations,
ali the battles, all the victories, all the de-
feats, all the glooms, all the brightness, all
the centuries to make it possible.
book! It is the chorus of all ages: it is
the drawing room in which kings and queens
and orators and poets and historians come
on earth would worship that. If burned
incense to any idol would build an altar to
that. Thank God for good books, healthful
books, inspiring books, Christian books,
books of men, books of women, Book of God
It is with these good books that we are to
overcome corrupt literature. Upon the frogs
swoop with these eagles. I depend much for
the overthrow of Ubiquitous literature upon
the mortality of books. Even good books
have hard struggle to live.
POIvhinS JYr0fa forty hooks. n+1lv fuo ~
them left. Thirty books OF Tac1sus have
persisted. Twenty books Of Pliny have per-
ished. Livy wrote one hundred and forty
books; only thirty-ive of them remain.
4Eschylus wrote one hundred dramas; only
seven remain. Euripides wrote over hun
dred; only nineteen remain. Vatro wrote
the biographies Of over seven hundred great
Romans. All that wealth of biography bias
persisted. If good and valuable books have
such struggle to live, what must be the
fate of those 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 Christianization will
go on until there will be nothing left but
good books, and they will take the supremacy
of the world. May you and live to see the
illustrious day!
Against every bad pamphlet send good
pamphlet; against every unclean picture send
an innocent picture; against every sour
rilous song send Christian song; against
every bad book send a good book; and then
it will be as it was in ancient Toledo, where
the Toletum missals were kept by the saints
in six churches, and the sacrilegious Romans
demanded that those missals be destroyed,
and that the Roman missals be substituted;
and the war came on, and am glad to say
that the whole matter having been referred
to champions, the champion of the Toletum