The Manning times. [volume] (Manning, Clarendon County, S.C.) 1884-current, 1900-08-08

ricAt times acd read il right proportion
With other books, carnot help but De
enpobl;ng and purifying; hat, alas, for
the loathsome and impure literature
tHat has come in the shape of novels,
like frcshet ove1Aowing all the banks
of decency and common sense! They
are coming from some Of the most cele-
bra,ed publishing houses. They are
coming with recommendation of some
Of our religious newspapers. They lie
on your center table to curse your chill
dren and blast with their Internal fires
generations unborn. You fud these
books in the desk Of the schoo! miss
in the trunk of the young man, IN tne
steamboat cabin, on the table OF the
hotel reception room. You see q !iSnI
in vour chi!6' 5 room late at night. You
suddenly go in aud say, Nv hat are you
6ning?" L am reading. What are
vou reading a book" You look
A. yhe book. 1t IS bad book. Where
did vou ct it," | borrowed it." Alas,
there are always those abroad who
rou!6 like to loan your son or daugh
ter a bad book! Everywhere, every
where, az unclean literature. [ charge
upon it the destruction Of 10 600 in
mortal souls, and l bid you wake up to
the magnitude of the evil.
| shal! take al the worlds literature
good novels and bad, travels true and
false, histories faithful and incorrect;
legends beautiful and monstrous, al!
tracts, ali chronicles, al poems, allan
lily, city, state and national liorarles =
ard pile them up in pyramid OF lltera-
ture. ard then | shall bring 10 bear
unon i some grand, glorious, 'nfalIlote,
urmis,akaoIe Christian principles. God
he!o me 10 speak with reference to my
last acooun: aud help you 10 listen.
charge you IN the first place to stand
aloof from all books that give false pic
lures oflife. Life is neither tragedy
nor a farce. h1en are not all either
knsves or heroes. Women are neither
angels nor furies. And yet if you de.
pended upon much of the literature of
the day you would get idea that life IN
stead of being something earnest, some
thing practical, is f,ful and fantastic
and ex:ravagant thing. How poorly pre-
pared are that young man and woman
for the duties Of today who spent last
night vadlng through brilliant pas
sages descriptive of magnificent knavery
and vickedness, The man will be look
iug all day long for his heroine in the
Office, by the forge in the factory, IN
the counting room, and he will not
ind her, and he will be dissatisfied. A
man who gives himself up to the indis-
criminate reading Of novels will be
oerveless, insne and nuisance. He
will be st neitherfor the store, nor the
shop, nor the field. a woman who
gives herself up to the indiscrimlnste
reading Of novels will be untitled for
the duties of wife, mother, sister,
daughter. There she is, hair disheVel-
ed, countenance vacant, cheeks pale,
hands trembling, bursting into tears at
midnight over the fate Of some unfor-
tunate lover, in the daytime, when she
ought to be busy, staring by the halt
hour at nothing, biting her finger nails
into tie quick. The carpet that was
plain before will be palmer after hav,
ing wandered through a romance a!
night long in tesselated halls OF
castles. And your /, iustrious COM
paniops will be more unattractive than
ever, now that you have walked IN the
romance through parks with plumed
princesses or lou0ged in the arbor with
the polished desperate. Oh, these
confirmed novel readers! They are un
fitted for this life, which is tremen-
dous discipline. They know pot how
to 20 through the furnaces Of trial
through which they must pass, and
they are untitled for world where
everything we gain We achieve by hard
and long continuing work.
Again, abstain from al those books
which, while they have some
good things, have also an admixture OF
evil. You have read books that had
two elements in them-the good aud
the bad. Which stuck to you? The
bad! The heart of most people is like
a sieve, which let's the small PARTICLES
of gold fall through, but keeps the
great cinders. Ooce in awhile there is
a mind like q loadsaope which, plunged
amid steel and brass filings, gathers up
the steel and repels the brass. But it
is generally exactly the opposite. #
you attempt to plunge through hedge
of burs to get one blackberry, you will
get more burs instead. You cannot af-
ford to read bad book, hcwever good
you are. You say, The 4fuence is
insignificant. tell you that the
scratch of pin has sometimes produced
lockjaw. Alas, if through curiosity, as
mary do, you pry into an evil book,
y.ur curiosity is as dangerous as that
of the man who would take torch into
3 gunpowder mill merely to see whether
1t would really bloH up or not.
"a Ne02SSIIe III Lew AoiA Au@u
pu, his arm through the bars of a
black leopard's cage. The animals
hide looked so sleek aud bright and
beautiful. He Just sIroked it once.
The monster seized him, aud he drew
forth hand torn and margled and
bleeding. Oh, touch not evil, even
wi.l he faintest s,rcke! Though it nay
5e glossy and beaunfu', touch it not,
lest you pull forth your soul torn and
bleeding under the clutch of the leop-
ard. But, ycu say, ''how can l find
out whether book is good or bad with
out reading ii? There is always some.
,hiog suspicious about bad book. |
never knew an eIception-something
suspicious in the index or style of illus
tration. This veDomous reptile always
carries warning rattle.
Again, l charge you to ostand of from
all those books which corrupt the imagi-