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

There are thousands of men and women in
this country, some for personal gain, some
through innate depravity, some through a
spirit of revenge. who wish to this great
avenue of convenience and intelligence for
purposes revengeful, salacious and diabolic
Wake up the law. Wake up the penalties
Let every court room on this subject be a
Sinai thunderOus and afame. Let the con-
victed 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 being
done. A great many OF the printing presses
Cnat gave themselves entirely to the puo1lca.
ton of vile literature have been stopped or
have gone into business less obnoxious.
What has thrown off, what has kept off the
rail trains of this country for some time
back nearly all the leprous periodicals:
Those Of us who have been on the rail trains
have noticed great change in the last few
months and the last year or two. Why have
nearly all those vile periodicals been kept of
the rail trains for some time back? Who eff
fected it, These societies for tt : - fca on
of railroad literature gave N.arning to the
publishers and warning to railroad compan-
les and warning to conductors, and warn
ing to newsboys, to keep the Internal stuff
off the trains.
Many of the cities have successfully pro-
hibited the most of that literature even from
going on the news stands Terror has seized
upon the publishers and the dealers in impure
literature, from the fact that over thou
sand arrests have been made and the aggre-
gate tine for which the convicted have been
sentenced to the prison is over oDe hundred
and ninety years, and from the fact that
about two millions of their circulars have
been destroyed, and the business is not as
profitable as it used to be.
How have go many of the news stands of
our great cities been purified? How has Sc
much Of this iniquity been baked? By
moral suasion? Oh no. You might IS veil
go into the jungle of tie East Indies and pat
q cobra on the neck, and with profound ar
gument try to persuade it that it is morally
wrong to bite and to sting and to poison
anything. The only answer to your argu-
ment would be uplifted head and hiss
and a sharp. reeking tooth str ( ir' your
arteries. The only argument for cobra Is
a shotgun, and the only argument for these
dealers in impure literature is the clutch of
the police and the bean soup in a peniten-
tiary The law! The law! invoke to con-
summate 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 l 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 to be
sung to the tune of "Old Hundred" I have
no sympathy with the attempt to make the
young old. I would rather join in crusade
to keep the young young. Boyhood aud girl
hood must not be abbreviated. But there
are good books, good histories. good b1ogra.
PIXIES, good works of fiction, good books of
all STYLES with which are to fill the minds
of the young so that there will be no moro
room for the useless and the vicious than
there is room for chaf in bushel measure
which is already filed with Michigan
wheat.
Why are fifty per cent. of the criminals in
Soi1c op &Lo TT~oit tod
States to-day under twenty-one years Of
age? Many of them under seventeen, under
SIXTEEN under fifteen, under fourteen, under
thirteen. Walk along one OF the corridors
of the Tonbs prison in New York and look
for yourselves. Bad books, bad newspapers
bewitched them us soon 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 Paradise. Do not
glorify the dirk and the pistol. Do not call
the 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
rottenness they will catch the malaria and
death
"Oh," says some one, 81 am business
man, and / have no time to examine what
my children read. have no time to inspect
the books that come into my household" If
your children were threatened with typhoid
fever, would you have time to go for the doc
tor? Would you have time to watch the
progress of the disease? Would you have
time for the funeral? In the presence of my
GCd warn you of the fact that your chill
dren are threatened with moral and spirit
ual typhoid, and that unless the thing be
stopped it will be to them funeral Of body,
funeral of mind, funeral of SOUL Three
funerals in one day.
Ny word is to this vast multitude of young
people: Do not touch, do not borrow, do
not buy corrupt book or corrupt 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 eter-
nifty, or it may be book that may come
into your possessions tomorrow.
A good book-who can exaggerate it's
power? Benjamin Franklin said that his
eading of Cotton Mather's Essays to Do
Good" in childhood gave him holy aspira-
tons for all the rest of his life. George Law
declared that a biography he read in child
hood gave him all his subsequent prosperi-
ties. a clergyman, many years ago, passing
TO the far west, stopped at a hotel. He saw
woman copying something from Dodd-
.idge's "Rise and Progress" r. seemed that
she had borrowed the book, and there were
lone things she wanted especially to re-
member.
=. The clergyman had in his sachel copy of
sOoddridge's Rise and Progress" and so he
passed on. The clergyman came that way,
/ and he asked where the woman was whom
She had seen so long ago. She lives yonder
n that beautiful house." He went there and
'aid to her, do you remember mes" She
id, mo, do not" He said, "Do you re-
and Progress thirty years ago%' ''Oh, yes;
remember. That book saved my soul. l
loaned the book to all my neighbors, and
they read it and they were converted to God,