Milford chronicle., 1891-03-13

y When Sir Rowland Hill spent his life II
trying to secure cheap postage not onll
for England, but for all the world, and e
open the blessing of the postofiee TO al
, honest business, and to all messages o.
charity aud kindness and affection, fol
all healthful intercommunicatiou he die
not mean to make vice easy or to fill 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 a one cent STAMP
for a circular or two cent stamp for a
letter to blast a man OF destroy a 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
in this country, some for personal gain,
some through innate depravity, some
through a spirit of revenge, who wish to
use this great avenue of convenience and
intelligence for purposes revengeful, sala-
cious and diabolie. Wake up the law.
Wake up all its penalties. Let every court
room on this subject be a 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
I the publication Of vile literature have been
stopped or have gone into business less OBJ
noxious, What has thrown off, what has
! kept or the rail trains Of this country for
some time back nearly all the leprOus pc
riodicals2 Those of rs who have been on
/ the rail trains have noticed a great change
/ 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-
eties for the publication of railroad liter
ature 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
from going on the news stands Terror
has seized upon the publishers and the
dealers in impure literature, from the fact
that over n 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 LAWi 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 suasion? Oh, no. You might rs
well 20 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, reeking tooth struck
into your arteries. The only argument
for a cobra is a shotgun, and the only argu-
ment for these dealers in impure literature
is the clutch of the police and bean sOupin
a penitentiary. The lawl The lawl / in
woke 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 |
to be sung to the tune of "Old Hun /
dred.' ! have no sy:npathy with the 1
attempt to make the young old. / would |
rather join in a crusade to keep the |
young young Boyhood and girlhood /
must not be abbreviated. But there are I
good books, good histories, good biogra- |
phies, good works of fiction, good books of /
allstyles with which we are to ill the minds .
of the young, so that there viii be no more |
room for the useless and the vicious than 1
there is room for chaff in a bushel measure
which is already filled with Michigan
wheat.
Why are so per cent, of the criminals in
the jails and penit0ntiaries of the United
States today under twenty-one years Of
RgeY Many Of them under seventeen, un-
der sixteen, under fifteen, under fourteen,
under tliirteenS Walk along one Of the
corridors of the Tombs prison in New York
and look for yourselves. Bad books, bad
bewitched them as soon as
they got out of the cradle Beware of all
those stories which end wrong Beware
of all these books which make the road
that ends in perdition seem to end ia Par
ndise. DO not glorify the dirk and the pis-
tol. 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 iack-o'
lanterns dance on the decay and rotten
ness they will catch the malaria and death.
"Oh," 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 we're threatened
with typhoid fever, would you have time
to go for the doctor? Would you have time
to watch the progress Of the disease? Would
you have time for the funeral? In the I
presence of my God I warn you of the fact |
that your children are threatened with
moral and spiritual typhoid, and that un- /
less the thing be stopped twill be TO them
funeral of body, funeral Of mind, funeral
If soul, Three funerals in one day.
My word is to this vast multitude OF
roung people; Do not touch, do not bor-
.ow, do not buy corrupt book or a cor
.upt picture A book VIII decide a mans
iestiny for good or for evil. The book you
cad yesterday may have decided you for
inie and for eternity, or it may be book
hat may come into your possession to-
morrow.
THE POWER OF A GOOD BOOK.
A good boolk-who can exaggerate its
,owerP Benjamin Franklin said that his /,
eading of Cotton Mather's Essays to Do !
hood" in childhood gave him holy aspira-
ions for all the rest Of bis life, George
4aw declared that u biography he read in
hildhood gave him all his subsequent
,rosperities. A clergyman, many years
CO. passing to the far west. stopped at a Z
iotel. He saw a woman copying some S
hing from Doddridge's "Rise and Prog S
ess." 1t seemed that she had borrowed a
he book, and there were some things she q
wanted especially to remember, Z
The clergyman had IN his sachel a copy k
[ Doddridge's "Rise and Progress p and S
o he made her present Of it. Thirty Il
ears passed on. This clergyman came n
hat way, and he asked where the woman o
ras whom he had seen so long ago. 'She u
ives yonder in that beautiful house, {
Ie went there and said to her, DO 0
on remember mes" She said, mo, ! I
o not" He said, "D9 you remember a
nan gave you Doddridge's Rise and a
'rogress' thirty years ago2p "Oh, yes; ! p
amember That book saved my souk ] d
)aned the book to all MY neighboEs, and s.
hey read it and they were converted to ii
od, and we had revival Of religion n
fl.-.sr.I, Ft. unrtrtf