Martinsburg herald. [volume] (Martinsburg, W. Va.) 1881-1920, 1891-03-14

STATES To-Day QilucT tWtlb1 luis JtdtS VI
age? Many of them under seventeen, under
sixteen, under fifteen, under fourteen under
thirteen. Walk along one OF the corridors
of the Tombs prison in New York and look
for yourselves Bad books, bad newspapers
bewitched them as coon as 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 aci
death.
"Oh,n says some one, II am business
man, and have 10 time to examine what
nv children read. have no time toiDspect
the BOOKS that come into my h1useaold.D II
yoTe children were threatened wlta TYPHOID
fever, would you have tim 70 go for the doc
tor? Would you have tine TO watch TIE
progress of the disease; Would you have
time for the fuaerai2 In the presence o. my
Gcd warn you of the fac5 thas your chi
6rea are threatened with moral and SPIRIT
ual TYPHOID, aad that ule5s the thug BE-
stopped it vii! be to the n funeral OF body,
funeral of mind, funeral OF soul. Three
funerals in one day.
my NDlu Is 10 l4iio htlSb Iiifltllttilt 9OdtA5
people: Do not touch, do not borrow, do
not buy a 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-
uity, or it may be BOOK that may come
into your possessions tomorrow.
A good book-who can exaggerate its
power? Benjamin Franklin said that his
reading of Cotton Mather's Essays to Do
3oodn in childhood gave him holy aspira-
tons for all the rest of his life. George Law
declared that biography he read in child
hood gave him all his subsequent prospect
ties A clergyman, many years ago, passing
to the far west, stopped at hotel. He saw
a woman copying something from Dodd-
ridges ''Rise and Progress" 1t seemed that
she had borrowed the book, and there were
some things she wanted especially to re-
member.
The Clergyman had in his sachel copy of
| Doddridge's Rise and Progress" and so he
made her present of it. Thirty years
passed on. The clergyman came that way,
and he asked where the woman was whom
he had seen so long ago. ''She lives yonder
I in that beautiful house" He went there and
said to her, DO you remember meY She
said, mo, 1 do mott He said, "Do you re-
member a man gavo you Doddridge's Rise
and Progress thirty years ago?' 'Oh, yes;
| remember. That book saved my soul. 1
loaned the book to all my neghbors, and
they read it and they were converted to God,
| and we had revival OF religion which swept
through the whole community. We built a
church and called a pastor You see that
spire Wonder, don't you? That church
was built as the result of that book you gave
me thirty years ago" Oh, the power of
good bookl But, alasl for the influence of
| bad book.
John Angel James, than whom England
never had holier minister, stood IN his pull
pit at Birmingham AMI said: Twenty-Five
years ago a lad loaned to me an infamous
book He would loan it only fifteen min
utes and then l had to give it back, but that
book has haunted me like spscter ever
sincs. | have in agony of soul, on my knees
before God, prayed that he would obliterate
from my soul the memory of it, but shall
carry the damage of it until the day of my
death.n The assassin of Sir William Rus
sell declared that he got the inspiration for
his crime by reading what was then new
and popular novel, Jack Sheppard"
Homer's ''Iiiadn made Alexander the war
rior Alexander said so. The story OF
Alexander made julius Caesar and Charles
XII. both men Of blood Have you in yout
pocket, or in your trunk, or in your desk ar
business a bad book, bad picture, bad
pamphlet? In Gods name warn you to de-
stroy 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 wo-
men. What are you reading? Abstain from
all those books which, while they had some
( good things about them, had also an ad1lix-
/ ture of evil You have read books that had
two clements in them-the good and the bad
To hn bolt Tho hon -t
Of most people is like Sieve which lets tha
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 If you attempt to
! plunge through fence of burrs to- get ono
/ blackberry, you will get more burrs than
/ blackberrieS.
You cannot afford to read a bad book,
/ however good YOU are. You say, 1.-THE in
| fuence is insignificant" | tell you that the
/ scratch of pin has sometimes produced lock-
law. Alas. if through curiosity, as many do
! you pry into an evil book, your curiosity i
as dangerous as that of the man who woulC
take a torch into a gunpowder mill merely
to see whether it would really blow up OF
/ not. In menagerie man put his arm
! through the bars Of q black le0pard,S cage
The animals hide looked so sleek and brigh
and beautiful He just stroked it once. Tn,
monster seized him, and he drew forth hand
torn and mangled and bleeding
Oh, touch not the evil even with the faintr
est strokei Though it may be glossy and
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
without reading itg' There is always some
thing suspicious about bad book. l never
knew an exception something suspicious in
the index or style Of illustration. This ven
omous reptile almost always carries a warn
ing rattle.
The clock strikes midnight, A fair form
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 guardian spirit were trying to
shake the deadly book out of the grasp Hot
tsars fall She laughs with a shrill voics
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, an the rosy dawn soon after begins to
look through the lattice upon the pale form
that looks like a detained spscter of the
| night. Soon IN a madhouse she will mistake
her ringlets for curling serpeants, and thrust
her white hand through the bars of the
prison, and smito her head. rubbing it back
as though TO push the scalp from the skull,
shrieking: my brain my brainr Oh,
stand off from that! Why will you go
sounding your way amid the reefs and warn
ing buoys, when there is such a vast ocean
in whica you may voyage, all sail set?
We see 50 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
thu progress made from the time Of the i'm
prassions on clay, and then on the bark of
trees and from the bark OF trees to papYrus,
aId from papyru5 to the hide of wild beasts,
and from The hide Of wild beasty on down
until the miracles of our modern paper man
utactoTies, aud then see the paper, white and
pure as an infants soJi waiting for Gods in
segiptio1
a boos! Examine the type o. it. Examine
t1e printing OF 1t, Gnl see the progress from
the lime wien Soion's laws were written on
oaS pankS, and Hesioi's poems were written
tn tables o. lead, aud the Siniatic commani Is
were written on tables of stone, on down TO
Hoes perlectinG printing press
book Il TOOK all the universities of the
past, all the martyr fires, all the civilizations,
all the battles, all the victories, all the de
fe2tS all the glooius, all the brightness, all
the centuries 10 make it possible.
A 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
out TO greet yoI. II / worshjped anything
on earth would worship that. Ii burned
incense to any idol l 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
II is with thess good books that we a. to
overcome corrupt literature. Upon the frogs
swoop with these eagles. l depend much for
the overthrow of iniquitous literature upoa
the mortality of BOOKS Even good books
nNNn q hard stl.nrrle to i've