Daily tobacco leaf-chronicle. (Clarksville, Tenn.) 1890-1895, 1891-03-09
the influence or a bad pook

famous DOOR. lie would loan 1t only lii
teen minutes, and then | had to give it
back, but that book has haunted me like a
! specter ever since. / have in agony of soul,
on nay knees before God, prayed that he
would obliterate from my soul the memory
/ Of It, but l shall carry the damage of it UNI
! til the day Of my DEATH" The assassin Of
Sir William Russell declared that he got
the inspiration for his crime by reading
what was then new and popular novel,
"Jacl5 Sheppard Homer's "Iliad" made
Alexander the warrior. Alexander said
30. The story of Alexander made julius
Cesar and Charles XII both men of blood
Have you in your pocket, or in your trunk,
or in your desk at business a bad book
bad picture a bad pamphlets In Gods
name / warn you TO destroy it.
THE CHRISTIAN PRESS.
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 women. What are you reading? Alb
stain from all those books which, while
they had some good things about them,
have also an admixture of evil. You have
read books that had two elements in them
the good and the bad. Which stuck
TO you? The badi The heart of most PEG
pie is like sieve, which let's the small par
ticles 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 gener-
ally the opposite. If you attempt TO plunge
through fence of burrs to get one black
berry you will get more burrs than black
berries.
You cannot afford TO read bad book,
however good you are You say, 1.-THE in
lluence is insignificant" | tell you that
the scratch of pin has sometimes pro-
duced lockiaw. Alas, if through curiosity,
as many do, you pry into an evil book,
your curiosity is as dangerous as that of
the man who would take a torch into
gunpowder mill merely to see whether it
would really blow up or not. In n menag-
erie a man put his arm through the bars
of a black leopard's cage. The animals
hide looked so Seek and bright and beauti-
full. He just stroked it once The monster
seized him, and he drew forth hand torn
and mangled and bleeding.
Oh, touch not evil even with the faintest
strokel 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 chow can find out whether book is
good or bad without reading it?" There is
always something suspicious about bad
book. | never knew an exception-some-
thing suspicious in the index or style of
illustration. This venomous reptile almost
always carries a warming rattle.
l.. l.. n : I, IT.
bends over a romance. The eyes flash fire
The breath is quick and irregular. Oc-
casionally the color dashes to the cheek,
and then dies out. The hands tremble as
though n guardian spirit were trying to
shake the deadly book out of the grasp
Hot tears fall, She laughs with q shrill
voice 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, and the rosy dawn soon after
begins to look through the lattice upon the
pale form that looks like a detained specter
Of the night. Soon in a mad house she will
mistake her ringetS for curling serpents
and thrust her white hand through the
bars of the prison, and smite her head
rubbing it back as though to push the scalp
from the skull, shrieking: "My brain! my
brainp Oh, stand off from that! Why
viii you go sounding your way amid the
reefs and warning buoys, when there is
such a vast ocean in which you may voy-
age, all sail set?
WHAT IS A BOOK?
We see so many books we do not I'M
derstand what n 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 cannot do it. Examine
the paper and estimate the progress
made from the time OF the impressions
on clay, and then on to the bark of
trees, and from the bark of trees to papy-
rus, and from papyrus to the hide of wild
beasts, and from the hide Of wild beasts
on down until the miracles Of our modern
paper manufactures and then see the pa
per, white and pure as an infants soul,
waiting for Gods inscription.
A book Examine the type of it, Ex-
anime the printing Of it, and see the prog
ress from the time when Solon's laws were
written on oak plauks, and Hesiods poems
were written on tables of lead, and the
Suiatic commands were written on tables
Of stone, on down to Hoes perfecting
printing press,
A book 1t took all the universities of
the past, all the martyr fires, all the civil
izatiOns, all the battles, all the victories,
all the defeats, all the glooms, all the
brightnesses, all the centuries to make it
possible.
A book 1t is the chorus of the ages; it
is the drawing room in which kings and
queens and orators and poets and historians
come out TO greet you. If | worshiped
anything on earth / would worship that.
II | burned incense TO any idol / would
al n M A1 fnr
good books healthful books, inspiring
books, Christian books, books of men,
books of women, Book of God 1t is with
these good books that we are to overcome
corrupt literature. Upon the frogs swoop
with these eagles. depend much for the
overthrow of iniquitous literature upon
the mouautyo of books. Even good books !
have a hard struggle TO live.
polymus wrote forty books; only five Of
them left Thirty books of Tactus have
persisted Tivy wrote one hundred and
forty books; only thirty-tivs of them re-
main. Alzahylus wrote one hundred !
dGmas; Only seven remain. Euripides |
wrote over a hundred; only nineteen re-
main, Narro wrote the biographies of
over seven hundred great Romans. Al !
that wealth Of biography has persisted, |
If good and valuable books have such |
struggle Go live what must be the fate of
those that are diseased and corrupt and
blasted at the very start. They will die as
the frogs when the Lord turned back the |.
plague. The work of Christianization will /
20 on until there will be nothing left but
good books, and they will take the SUI
premacy of the world May you and l live
e., eaa tho il1netri,,,y 1nyt