The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1891-04-01

sentenced to the prison Is over one 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 80 many of the news stands OF
our great cities been purified? How has so
much of this iniquity bean balked7 By
moral suasion? Oh, no. You might as we'll
go into the jungle Of the East Indies and pat
a cobra on the neck, and with profound ar
gument try to persuade it that it is morally
wrong to bite and to sGing and to poison
anything. The only ans wer to your argu-
ment would be an uplifted head and hiss
and sharp reeking tooth struck into your
arteries. The only argument for cobra is
a shotgun, and the only argument for these
the police and the bean soup In peniteu.
tiary. The law! The lawl Invoke to con-
summate the work so grandly begunl
Another way in which we are to drive
back this plague Of Egyptian frogs Is by
filling the minds Of our young people with
q healthful literature. / do not mean to say
that all the bools and newspapers in our
families ought to be religious books and
newspapers, or that every song ought to be
sung to the tune Of s'Old Hundred" l have
no sympathy with the attempt to make the
young old. I.would rather join In crusade
to keen the young young. Boyhood aud girl
hood 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, 80 that there Will be no more
room for the useless and the vicious than
there is room for chaR In bushel measure
which is already filed with Michigan
wheat.
Why are fifty per cent Of the criminals In
the jails and penitentiaries OF the United
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 Tombs prison in New York and look
for yourselves. Bad books, bad newspapers
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 desperado brave or the libertine gallant.
Teach our young people that if they go down
into the swamps and marshes to watch tho
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" II
your children were threatened with typhoid
fever, would you have time to go for the doc
tori Would you have time to watch tbs
progress Of the disease? Would you have
time for the funerals 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 bs
stopped it will 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 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 its
power? 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 child
hood gave him all his subsequent prosperi-
lies. A clergyman, many years ago, passing
TO the far west stopped at a hotel. He saw
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
Ooddridge's Rise and Progress" and SO he
made her a 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 yonderr
in that beautiful house." Ee went there and
said to her, DO you remember me% She
member man gave you Doddridge,s Rise
and Progress thirty years ago" "Oh, yes:
remember. That book saved my soul. !
loaned the book to all my neighbors and
they read it and they were converted to God,
and we had revival Of religion which swept
through the whole community. We built
church and called a pastor. You see that
spire yonder, don't you? That church
was built as the result of that book you gave
me thirty years ago." Oh, the mower of
good book! But, alas! 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-hve
book. He would loan 1t only fifteen min
utes, and then had to give it back, but that
book has haunted ma like a specter ever
since. have in agony Of soul, on my knees
before God, prayed that he would obliterate
from my soul the memory Of it, but l shall
carry the damage Of it until the day OF my
death" 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"
Homers "Iliad" 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 bad book, a 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 adnix-
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 like sieve, which lets the
small particles of gold fall through, but
keeps the great cinders. Once in while
there is a mind like loadstona, 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 than
blacSberrieS.
You cannot afford to read a bad book,
however good you are. You say, The in
fluence is Insignificant" tel you that the
scratch of a 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 tine man who would
take torch into gunpowder mill merely
to see whether it would really blow up OF
not. In mcnagerie man put his arm
tbrouoh tha barS Of n black leOpard's cage.