Wessington Springs herald. (Wessington Springs, Aurora County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1891, 1891-03-13

good postmasters and United States dis
trict ATTORNEYS, and detectives and re-
formers concert in their action to stop
this plague. When Sir Rowland Hill
spent his life in trying to secure cheap
postage. not only for England. but for
all the world. and to open the blessings
of the postotlicc to all honest business,
and to all messages of charity and kind
ness and affection, for all heal,ll1ul inter-
communication. he did not mean to make
vice easy or to fill the mail bags OF the
United States with the scabs of such 4
leprosy.
1t ought not to be in the power OF every
bad man who can raise Il one cent stamp
for a circular or Il two cent stamp Tor Il
letter to blast a man or destroy home.
Tho postal service of this country must
be clean, must be kept clean, and we
must all understand that the swift retlib-
utions of the United States Government
hover over every violation OF the letter
box.
Many Of the cities have successfully
prohibited the most OF that literature
even fru.n going on the news stands.
Terror has seized upon the publishers
and the dealers In impure literature,
rests have been made. and the aggregate
Tim" FOR which the convicted have been
sentenced 10 prison is over one hundred
and ninety years. and from the fact that
about two million Of their circulars have
iccu destroyed, and the business is not
as profitable us it used TO be.
How have so macy Of the news stands
of our great cities been purified? How has
n, r. III :,,in h.,t1 n,1o
BY moral suason? Oh. no. You might as
we'll go into a jungle of the East Indies
and pat cobra on the neck, and withspro-
found argument try to persuade i; that
il is morally wrong to bite and to sting
ard to poison anything. The only
answer to- your argument would be an
up!iftcd head and q hiss and a
sharp, rcc!l;ng tooth struck into your
arteries. Tho only argument fora cobra
is shotgun, and the only argument for
these dealers iii impure literature is the
clutch Of the police and bean soup in Il
pcnitcntiarg. The law. The law. / i'll
woke to consumatc the work so sranGly
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 u hcalthful literature. ] do not
mean to say that all the books and news
papers in our families ought to be re-
lgious books and newspapers, or that
every song ought to be sung to the tune
of ':Old Hundred" l have no sympathy
with the attempt to make the young old.
l would rather join in q crusade to keep
the young young. Boyhood and girlhood
must not be abbreviated. But there arc
good books, good histories, good biogra-
phics, good works Of fiction, good books
OF al! styles with which we arc to fill the
minds of tho young, so that there will be
no more room for the useless and the
vicious than there is room for chatf in a
bushel measure which is already filled
with Michigan wheat.
Why are fifty per cent. of the crimi-
nails in the jails and penitcntiaries
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
bcwitehcd 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
pcrdition seem to end in Paradise. DO
not glorify the dirk and the pistol. DO
not call the desperate brave or the libcr-
tire gallant. Teach our young people
that if they go down into the swamps
and marshes to watch the jack Ian
terms dance on the decay and rottenness
'lley will catch the malaria and death.
'Oh," says some one, 81 am a business
man, and l have no time to examine
what my children read l 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 doctor:
Would you have time to watch the pro.
grcss OF tho disease? Would you have
time for the funeral? In the presence OF
my God | warn you of the fact that your
children arc threatened with moral and
spiritual typhoid, and that unless the
thing be 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 Dor.
row, do not buy corrupt book or cor.
rupt 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 eternity, or it may
be a book that may come into your pos.
session 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 as.
pirations for all the rest of his life
George Law declared that a biography
! lie read in childhood gave him all his
subsequent prospcrities. A clergyman
many years ago passing to the far West
stopped at a hotel He saw I; woman
copying something from Doddridge's
elise and Progress" 1t seemed that
she had borrowed the book, and there
We're some things she wanted especially
to remember.
The clergyman had in his sltchcl a
copy of DoGdrige's "KisG and Progress, >
ard 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 yondcr in that beautiful
luuse" lie event there and said to her,
''9o You remember meg" She said, ssNo,
no not He said, DO YOU remember a
man gave yon Il Doddridgc's Rise and
Progress thirty years agoo' 'Oh, yes;
remember. That book saved my soul.
] loaned Tic book to all my ncighbors,