The Dalles daily chronicle. [volume] (The Dalles, Or.) 1890-1948, 1891-03-21

| prosperfties. clergyman, many years
ago, passing 10 the far west. stopped at a
hotel. He saw a woman copying some
thing from Doddridge's ''Rise and Prog
ress. 1t seemed: that she had borrowed
the book, and there were some things she
wanted especially to remember.
The clergyman had in his sachel COPY
of Doddridge'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 50 long ago s'Sbe
lives yonder in that beautiful house.
He went there and said to her, ..Do
you remember me:a She said, mo, J
do not" He said, do you remember n
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 Il revival of religion
which swept through the whole communi.
1 ty. We built church and called 4, 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 power Of good book! But, alasl for
the influence of a bad book.
John Angel James, than whom England
| never had a hOlier minister, stood in his
pulpit at Birmingham and said: '"Twenty-
five years ago a lad loaned to me an in
famous book. He would loan it only fif-
teen minutes and then / had to give il
back. but that hook has haunted me like a
specter ever since. | have in agony of soul,
on my knees before God, prayed that he
would oblterate from my soul the memory
of it, but shall carry the damage of it un-
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 a new and popular novel
slack Sheppard" Homer,s 'Iliad'' mat.,.
Alexander the warrior. Alexander said
so.> 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, a
bad picture, a bad pamphlet? In Gods
name warn you to destroy it.
TEE 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? Ab-
stain from all. those books which, while
they had some good things about them,
have also I'm admixtnre of evil. You have
read books that had two elements in them
the good and the bad Which stuck
to. youf The badl. The heart of most peo-
pie is like u sieve which lets the small par
ticles of gold fall through, but keeps the
| great cinders. Once in while there is
mind like 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 btlrrs to get one black
berry you will get more burrs than black
berries. =, r,rs,S-.- -.+ +tr.r
You cannot afford to read a bad book,
however good you are. You say, 1.-The i'll
/ 6nenca iS r faIl +l.,2
the scratch of pin has sometimes pro
duced lockJaw. 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 a
gunpowder mill merely to see whether it
would really blow up or not. In q menag-
erie man put his arm through the bars
of a black leopard's cage. The animals
hide looked SO sleek and bright and beauti-
full. He just stroked it once. The monster
seized him, and he drew forth hand torn
and mangled and bleeding. 1r i
oh, touch not evil even with the faintest
stroket, 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" yon
say, "how can find out whether book is
good or bad without reading its'' There is
always something suspicious about a bad
book never knew an exception-some-
thing suspicious in the index or style of
illustration. This venomous reptile almost
always carries a warning rattle. az,
The clock strikes midnight A fair form
bends over 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 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 its own sound.
The sweat on her brow is the spray dashed
mp 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 detained specter
Of the night, Soon in mad house she will
mistake her ringiets for curling serpenJs,
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
brainl' Oh, stand off from thatl Why
will 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 sets sfs s4F
WHAT Is a 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. 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 bocki 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 planks, and Hesiod,s poems
were. written. on tables, of land nrnd tho