The united opinion. [volume] (Bradford, Vt.) 1881-1970, 1891-03-13

tooth stuck into your arteries. The
only argument for cobra Is a shotgun,
and the only argument for these deal
ers in impure literature Is the clutch Of
the police and bean soup In the peni
Tertiary. The law! The law! | In
woke to consummate the work SO grand
ly begun!
Another way in which we are to drive
back this plague of Egyptian frogs d
BY fllling the minds of our young people
with healthful literature. I do moi
mean to say that oil 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 sylnpa-
thy with the attempt to make the
young old. l would rather join in.a
crusade to keep the young young. Boy
hood and girlhood must not be alb.
breviated. But there are good books,
good histories, good biographies, good
works of fiction, good books of all styles
with which we are to fill the minds OF
the young, so that there will be no more
room for the useless and vicious than
there is room for the chaff in bushel
measure which is already filled with
Michigan wheat.
RUINED BY PERNICIOUS READINd9n
Why are so per cent. of the criminal
in the jails and penitentiaries of the
United States today under twenty one
years of age9 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 your
selves. Bad books, bad newspapers
bewitched them as soon 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 lanterns dance on the decay
and rottenness, they will catch the ma
laria and death.
ooh" says some one, II am bust
ness man, and l have no time to exaM-
inc what my children read. 1 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
tor2 Would you have time to watch
the progress of the disease? Would you
have time for the funeral2 In the pres
ence of my God warn yon of the fact
that your children are threatened with
moral and spiritual typhoid, and that
unless the thing be stopped it will be I'd
them funeral of body, funeral of mind,
funeral of soul. Three funerals in che
day.
My word is to this vast multitudeiof
young people: Do not touch, doaoti
borrow, dosnot buy a corrupt haa1
kcorrtptt picture: x book will ded( 6e ,
a mans destiny for good or for ell.
The book you read yesterday nray hq ",
decided you for time and for eternity,
Or it may be book that may come into
your possession tomorrow.
THE POWER OF A GOOD BOOK.
A good book-who can exaggerate
it's power9 Benjamin Franklin said
that his reading of Cotton Mather's
Essays to Do Good" in childhood
gave him holy aspirations for all the
rest of his life. George Law declared
that biography he read in childhood
gave him all his subsequent prospect
ties. A clergyman, many years ago,
passing to the far west, stopped at a
hotel. lie saw a woman copying some
thing from Doddridge's Rise and
Progress" 1t seemed that she had
borrowed the book. and there were
some things she wanted especially to
The clergyman had in his sachel a
copy of Doddrige's Rise and Prog
ress," and SO he made her present of
t. Thirty years passed on. The
clergyman came that way, and he asked
where the woman was whom he had
,een long ago. They said, "She lives
vonder in that beautiful house" He
went there and said to her, do you
remember meW She said, mo, do
aot." He said, DO you remember a
nan gave you Doddridge's Rise and
Progress thirty years ago9" "Oh,
yes; l remember. That book saved
ny soul. I loaned the book to all my
aeighbors, and they read it and were
to God, and we had re-
vival of religion that swept through the
whole community. We built church
and called a pastor. You see that
,pire yonder, don't you9 That church
was built as the result of that book you
gave me thirty years ago." Oh, the
power of good book! But, alas for
The influence of bad book.
John Angel James, than whom Eng
and never had holier minister, stood
n his pulpit at Birmingham and said:
twenty-five years ago lad loaned to