The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1899-09-17

of the book. Did you ever notice that |
if you lend a friend paper from which !
a clipping has been made, he will !
never rest satisfied until he has found Il |
fresh paper to see what had been cur |
out? Until he can find that out me !
takes no pleasure in the good things in |
the balance of the paper. lhcSa who |
borrowed the clipped david flarum'
from the Boston Public Library raised
such a hullabaloo about the vandalism
that it was withdrawn from circulation
altogether. the reason given being That
the book was coarse. Inc exclusion
Of the hook by the library made thous-
ncs want it who might not have read
If but for the controversy which fol
lowed, and it is said that fully forty
Thousand copies have been sold in Bos-
ton alone.
The objection to David Harum" by
religious PEOPLE is thus set forth i'll an
article in Mosher's Magazine:
MIR. Harum has no religion, and is
given as an admirable illustration Of
how good a man may be without at.
That he is merely pagan appears
from many passages. The au-
thor who goes back to pagan days for
Il
Moreover he sets forth a false type
The natural man is not good man.
If the unreligious man can be
so good, what service does religion rem
der mankind at all?" We all regret the
untimely death of Mr.. Westcott, who
wrote David HarUlm," and it adds to
our regret that he is not here TO reply
to such criticism. No good book ever
ii 4 1,, VNpn
Personally, some of us are inclined to
discount the David Harum" enthu-
siasm and to miss any literary quality
in it. But that is apart from the ques-
ton of its mortality and it's Immortality.
David was an epicurean philosopher and
an attractive one, but to call him a
corrupter of youth and an intellectual
pal of the late Colonel IngersolI is sadly
to misjudge his influence No reader
is going to do anything more serious
than to smile with David and chuckle
over his genial shrew6ness. Mr.. Ha-
rum will not sensibly affect the progress
of the world, either favorably or I'M
favorably. There will always he people
to follow his Golden Rulc-"Do unto the
Teller the way he'd like to do unto you,
an do it first'-but they won't follow it
merely because David Harum said so.
His philosophy was known long before
Mr.. Westcott set pen ON paper, and
rather than a beacon to lead folks astray
David resembles a reflection in Ii mirror
made for entertainment.
Ambrose Bierce, in Il criticism of the
New York journal. is very severe in his
criticism of the hit" of the year, writ
ing:
For several months the booksellers for
the principal cities in this country nave
beer reporting that the book David
Harum' sells better than any other.
The sales have already gone into the
hundreds Of thousands. IT has been re-
viewed with reclamation by all the pop
ular newspapers and magazines, stares
ut you from every centre table, and is
flung into your ears whenever you have
the hardihood to enter a "parlor."
David Harmm' is one of the most can
didly vulgar and stupid books ever prof
fered to the rigly taste and ciamwiSe nm
derstanding of that infinite ass, THE
General Reader" lit is, of course, writ
ten in "Dialect"-that is, i'll the loutly
locution of the unlettered land therefore
interesting) peasant making a go at his
mother-speech. Its dialect" is so par
ticularly offensive and sickening that l
suppose it to be a transcript from ma
ture;" persons to whom it is possible
would certainly not deny themselves the
happiness of speaking it, and the book
may have SEINE value to the hardy phil
DIGGER tracing backward the tone of lin
guistic evolution to the grunt of the
primeval razorback hog. To record the
ropy vocal riddances Of gowks and
gables may be cne of the high purposes
of popular fiction, for anything that |
know, but at least its authors might,
in the interest Of art, charge its horri-
BILE words with something that a per-
son guiltless of cOngenital idiocy might
think to be thoughts. And perhaps they
would if not themselves suffering from
that pandemic infirmity. 1t is related
that the author of David Harum"
died a few months before it was pub
lished. If things were ever ordered
Alright IN this pernicious world he would
have died few months before writing
it,"