Connecticut western news., 1891-03-11


 torn and bleeding under the clutch of the black leopard But" you say, "how can find out whether a book is good or bad without reading it2' There is always something suspicious about a bad book. Inever knew an exception something suspicious in the index or style of illustration. This venomous reptile almost always carries warning rattle.
 The clock strikes midnight. A fair form bends over a romance. The eyes fash fire. The breath is quick and irregular. Occasionally the color dashes to the cheek, and then dies out. The hands tremble as though a guardian spirit were trying to shake the deadly book out of the grasp Hot tears fall She laughs with shrill voice that drops dead at it's 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 madhouse she will mistake her ring lets 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, sarieking, My brainl my brain!" Oh, stand off from thatl Why will you go sounding your way amid the reefs and warning buoys when there is such vast ocean in which you may voyage, all sail set9
 BOOK!
 We see so many books we do not un- derstand what 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. Ex- anime the paper and estimate the prog ress made from the time of the impress sions on the clay, and then on to the bark of trees, and from the bark of trees to papyrus, and from 2apyrus to the hide of wild beasts, and from the hide of wild beasts on down until the miracles of our modern paper manu- factories, and then see the paper, white and pure as an infants soul waiting for Gods inscription.
 A book! Examine the type of it. Examine the printing of it, and see the progress from the time when Solon's laws were written on oak blanks, and Hesiod's poems were written on tables of lead, and the Siniatic commands were written on tables of stone, on down to Hoes perfecting printing press.
 A book! It took all the universities of the past, all the martyr fires, all the civilizations, all the battles, all the vic tories, all the defeats. all the glooms, all the brightncsses. all the centuries to make it possible.
 A book It is the chorus of the ages :; it is the drawing room in which kings and queens and orators and poets and historians and philosophers come out to greet you. If worshiped anything on earth I would worship that. If burned incense to any idol I 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. It is with these good books that we are to overcome corrupt literature. Upon the frogs swoop with these eagles. de- pend much for the overthrow of in iquitous literature upon the mortality of books. Even good books have q hard struggle to live.
 Polybius wrote forty books; only five of them left. Thirty books of Tacitus have perished. Twenty books of Pliny have pershed. Livy wrote one hun dred and forty books; only thirty five of them remain. Hschylus wrote one hundred dramas; only seven remain. Euripides wrote over hundred; only nineteen remain. Varro wrote the biog- raphies of over seven hundred great Romans. All that wealth of biography has perished. If good and valuable books have such struggle to live, what must be the fate of those that are dis eased and corrupt and blasted at the very stA.t3 They will die as the frogs when the Lord turned back the plague Tho work of ChristianZation will go on until there will be nothing left but good books. and they will take the SUI prensey of the world. May you and l live to see the illustrious day!
 CoUNTERACT THE BAD WITH GOOD.
 Against every bad pamphlet send a good pamphlet; against every unclean picture send an innocent picture; against every scurrlous song send Christian song; against every bad book send d good book; and then it will be as it was in ancient Toledo, where the Toletum niss;lls were kept by the saints in six churches, and the sacrilegious Romans demanded that those missals be destroyed, and that the Roman mis- | sals be substituted; and the war came on, and an glad to say that, the whole matter having been referred to cham pions, the champion of the Toletum missals with one blow brought down the champion of the Roman missals. 1 So it will be in our day.
 The good literature, the Christian Ltsraturc, in it's championship for God anu the truth will bring down the evil literature in its championship for the devil feel tingling to the tips of my fingers and through all the nerves of my body and all the depths of my soul the certainty of our triumph. Cheer 1 up, oh men and women who are toiling for the puritication of society! Foil with your faces in the sunlight ''If God be for us, who, who can be against us?'
 Lady Hester Stanhope was the daugh ter of the third Earl of Stanhope, and after her nearest friends had died she