The Windham County reformer. (Battleboro, Vt.) 1876-1897, 1894-06-01
SOME FAMOUS NOVEL READERS.

From C. H. Davenports Recent Paper be-
fore the Professional Club on ''The Novel
of the Twentieth Century,
The passion for a story is as old as humanity
q universal passion, a natural instinct, almost
the only intellectual tie between barbarOus
and civilized man. We find it in the nursery
with the first budding of the chld's mind ever
hungry for tales ranging from the most COM
monplace to the earliest of fancy's forming.
We find it in the earliest childhood of every
race in the forms and fancies with which they
people the woods and lakes and every object
of animate nature, in the "folk lore" that
marks the beginnings of their literature, in
the songs and sages of their troubadours, and
later in the great epcs and dramas that have
marked the progress of the ages. Everywhere
in some form or other the story has been a
leading element. When He who spake as never
man spake brought to earth the mightiest
truths ever brought to men, he placed them in
the form of parallels as best suited to fix and
forever hold attention. And it is fact worth
noting that there is not anywhere work of
written religion from the Vendde Vesta to the
karon but partakes largely Of this character
| istic. Always and everywhere have the fable
| and the parable been a means of moral teach
ing.
Some of the greatest intellects of history
have been fed on works of fiction BOnaparte
was an omniverous reader of them, devOuring
volume after volume on his marches and in
his hours of leisure. So were our own Sher-
man, the most fertile and original general of
German commander. Mr.. Gladstone, so his
daughter tells U.S. makes one of each three
books he reads novel. Compile, in his "Liber- |
airy of Chosen Books" gives one-fifth to |
poetry, romance and art. Alexander fed /
upon Homer, Charles the VIII learned honor
and truth at the degenerate court of Louis XI /
from Amadis de Gaul. Turgot, the financier-
statesman of Louis XVI, who saw the need
Of attempted the great scheme of coinprehen-
sive reform that might have averted the
French Revolution, said he "regarded ro-
mances as books of morals and in these alone
had hefound any true morality"
1t was Napoleon who said "Imagination
governs the world" And we may believe
hat without an imagination developed to an
range, Napoleon's genius
would have been unequal alike to his achieve
nents in war and to the works of creative
that have remodeled modern
europe; that the March to the Sea, which {
LEANED the very vitals out of the Confederacy
would never have been conceived that the
Inspiring career of Gladstone rising originally
rom the narrowest of Toryism to measure r
fter measure of reform and higher elevation 7
# view of the rights of mankind, would have
een lost to the world; and that the mighty
Military machine, the most marvellous of all
istOry, which Austria and France success 1,
rely found irresistible from its first move
lent 10 the end OF Its sweep over these cOun- 81
ries in only few weeks time, could not have
cen built up as it was to its minutest detail n
y VonMoltke's genius for organization. d
Bulwer-LyttOn says it is the office of the
ovel "tO interest, to please and sportivey to "
evate-to take men from the low passions
nd miserable troubles of life into higher f;
'gion, to beguie pain, to excite generous
PROV for vicissitudes not ones own to raise 81
he passions into sympathy with heroic trou- %
les, to raise the soul into that serener atmos- .,
here from which it rarely returns to ordi- y
Try existence without some memory or as a.,
citation which ought to enlarge the domain II
thought or eXalt the motives of action"
Novel reading in this view is simply a ne ST
ssity for relaxation in this DEMONSTRATING
e, refreshment for the brain and muscle
,hausted by the struggle of life. Who is
ere among us that has not i'm the ssblue
US" that come to all, when cares and dis III
Engagements seem to multiply and every-
ing to go wrong, found i'm the reading of ID
cd story, in the very manner Bulwer de-
ribes, way back to sound mental digestion,
saner and kindlier views and to an easy
umph over tribulations that seemed so
re! Pity those who have no such re-
lrse. As we study our own mental history,
can begin to comprehend how, with i'm
nation atrophying, they go steadily and n
eper into darkness and bitterness, perhaps III
crime and anarchism.