The morning call., 1893-11-12
GOOD BOOKS FOR GIRLS.
A Campaign Needed Against Those That Exist

dreds by certain Eastern publishing
houses. They are written in job lots by
men and women hired upon salaries, who
do nothing else, and who could not by
reason of their ign ORANGE and lllteracy,
ma employment on any newspaper IN the
land. yet who make thousands of dollars
yearly grinding out this stuff. Their
stories deal with "high life" in an amazing
way Lor1s and ladies stalk through their
pages conversing like Gowns and bar
maids. The heroine is always working
girl, poor, but OH so painfully virtuOuS.
In half dozen that | have examined she
is New York girl. In one she was
typewriter, IN one milliner, in three
shopglrl, and in the last a sewing-girl.
There was in nearly every one female
detective, usually compound of "a devil
and ostrich and orphan child in one.
who always knew just when to appear
in time to arrest the course .of nature
and avert catastrophe from the
heroine. Each of these stories had, as
well, vile but wrathy villain. al
ways a society man, moving among the
four hundred, who entertained the basest
designs against the virtue of the heroine,
and each and every one put the young girl
of Is or II through series of temptations.
compromising situations and perils. TO
escape which, with or without the oppor-
tune services of the female sleuth hound,
would tax the powers of a Machiavelli,
but through all of which she passed
triumpEan' and unscathed. The majority
of these scenes and the conversations held
by the participants are such that were |
here to describe them or quote from them.
the editor of The CALL would blue-penciI
my copy as unfit for publication. Weak,
untrue to life. full OF illusions calculated
to arouse and foster sensuOuS and false
ideas, they cater to the very worst and
lowest elements of human nature while
pnrnnTtinO nOrtraV the HIGHEST and fbn
best.
In every instance, in the six books L
speak of, the poor put virtuous heroine
wins a wealthy husband and rises triumph
ant over her foes. Three out of the SIX
win titles as we'll as wealth. and are taken
in splendOr to England to take their places
among the peers and peeresses of the
realm" as one narrator expresses it. They
abound in dialogue of the ''At last l have
you! You shall not escape me now,"
and the "UnhaDd me, villain! or
touch me at your peril from high
heavens vengeance sort, and not
one of them possesses the faintest shadow
of merit of style, treatment or proba blity
to recommend il. 1t is sensational fiction,
smeared through all its pages with senti-
mentality and sensuality, conveying false
notions of life. unfolding false ideals, aud
setting forth false aims, that is respOn-
sible for the mental conditions in young
girls and older women that make possible
the scandals so constantly arising and
flooding so many of our newspapers with
sensational realities. 1t prepares the way
in the mind of maidenhOod for the work of
the betrayer. 1t casts a glamour of ro-
nance over the elopement with groom or
coachman, and weakens and under
mines the moral sense of wives and
mothers until they are ready victims
of vilainy. 1t is directly RESPONSE
bic for many of the atrocities in real
life that furnish employment for the DR..
Vests and Madame Laphames OF society.
1t exalts sensuous love, which, after all.
plays but very small part in the worlds
work, to a supreme place III the mental
concept of life, and so saturates the brain
in sickness and sentime tally as to rob
it of all the clear, healthy cOmmOn-sense
that makes human life useful and help
full and good.
We need good books for our girls. Books
Such as are written tor boys. dealing with
girlish as with bOyish realities and rele-
eating the Sentimentalities to the realm of
the future. In the past it has been difficult
TO write human books for girls, because
our girls have been very generally ex-
| cluded from the human plane and main
tanned. along with their mothers.
in the sexual reservation, but now
that life is broadening for them into some
thing like a emDlance of the outlook it
presents for their brothers, there is
brilliant future before the writer or school
of writer's who shall evolve from the
realities of existence wholesome, healthy,
real literature for girls.
when we have such literature we shall
have race of girls whose ideas of enjoy
ment will not be Ito take your arm an
walk an talk an quote poetry" and
whose chief thread OF conversation will
not be ''the boys"
ADELINE E. KNAPP.