The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1898-01-27

Charge That the Mass of Juvenile
Litera ture Is HurtfuI.
New York Times.

new 1Ofk Times.
Were the consequences of the vast multi
tude of juvenile books less deplorabe
there remains always the fact that there
are only SO many hours in the day; that
time given to the little Is necessarily time
taken from the great and that by the
great alone in literature mind and soul are
nourished.
Not many months ago in symposium of
mothers, a gentlewoman was brave enough
to say: Il am sorry to be obliged to be
sorry that Miss Alcott ever wrote" 1t
seemed hard saying, but it was wise
one. 1T was very unfortunate sugges-
tion,'' says Mr.. Warner, that there needed
to be books written for children" Take the
biography of any man or woman who has
achieved greatness, and see upon what
books the dawning intelligence was fed Can
we imagine Macaulay brought up on the
devoted to the interminable ELSIE Dins-
more series? Can. we think of Tennyson
''nourishing a youth sublime" upon "Oliver
Optic?" The few volumes accessible to
Burns and Carlyle in their peasant huts
We're books of enduring value We cannot
so much as fancy these masters introduced
to the world of letters by means of any of
the Little Twaddle'' books. Who does not
recall the gentle Elias description of the
education of his cousin Bridget?' TO be
tumbled into a library OF good English lit
erature was her college course, and it made
her the admired companion of the best
minds of her time.
The present writer knows family in
which no juvenile periodical is taken and
few children's books are admitted. Before
the children are ten years of age they have
heard the best plays of Shakespeare ard the
best of the Waverley Novels. One boy of
eight years has asked. and obtained. the
third reading of Guy Mannering.' "Uncle
Remus'' and THE Jungle Book are the
delight of child of six. A boy of fifteen
never wearies of Henry Esmond' and
THE NeWcomeS" These children are their
parents intellectual companions: children
and parents are of the same mold, to their
mutual joy and benefit.
The mistake of our age of books lies in
the assumption that all reading not bad is
good. and is, in itself, gate of literature;
whereas, the lamentable fact is that the
books are pushing literature further and
further from u.s. We are losing our power
Older readers can exercise a wise self-re-
straint, but the children are the principal
victims of the flood of nonliterary litera-
ture. They read what is given them by
their thoughtless elders, what they find
their Christmas table and in their Sunday
school libraries. We must defend them
against the good childrens books, such as
the three which have been an occasion to
If the reader thinks this view exagger-
ated or unjust, let him read Mr.. Warmers
eloquent protest against children's books in
the Editors Study of the October Harper's.
Those two pregnant pages should be pub
lished as a tract and circulated with as
much zeal as is a campaign document, I'M
til the public becomes aroused to the evil
wrought by the flood of Juvenile literature
that is fairly drowning the intellectual pos
sibilities of the youth of the Englsh-speak-
ms race.
We must admit that these books are
sometimes good for the ''grown-ups" They
derstand the strangely reticent heart of
youth. We are moderate, therefore, in our
demand. not asking the complete suppress
sion of childrens books, but that they shall
be classified with cigarettes. and it shall be-
come a penal offense to put them into the
hands of minors.