Savannah courier. (Savannah, Tenn.) 1885-1979, 1900-09-07

yer tApustu tiuh ny MISS lAuSCNOI lH'
The memories Of the past were never
more faithfully embalmed than in the
writings of Walter Scott. Cooper's
novels are healthfully redolent with the
breath Of the seaweed and the air of
the American forest. Charles Kings
ley has smitted the morbidtty of the
world and led great many to appre-
ciate the poetry of sound health, strong
muscles and fresh air. Thackeray did
grand work in caricaturing the pre-
tenders to gentilty and high blood.
Dickens has built his own monument in
his books, which are plea for the
poor and the anathema of injustice,
and there are a score of novelistic pens
to-day doing mighty work for God and
righteousness.
Now, say, books like these, read at
right times and read in right proper
ton with other books, cannot help but
be ennobling and purifying; but, alas,
for the loathsome and impure literature
that has come in the shape of novels,
llhC Il llGollCl al luN bubhh
of decency and common sense! They
are coming from some of the most cele-
brated publishing houses. They are
coming with recommendations of some
of our religious newspapers. They
| lie on your center table to curse your
children and blast with their internal
fires generations unborn. You find
these books in the desk of the school
miss, in the trunk of the young man,
in the steamboat cabin, on the table
Of the hotel reception-room. You see
light in your child's room late at
night. You suddenly go in and say:
"What are you doing?" 81 am read
ing" "What are you reading?" "a
book" You look at the book. 1t is a
bad book "Where did you get it?" 81
borrowed it," Alas, there are always
those abroad who like to loan to your
son or daughter bad book! Every
where, everywhere, an unclean litera-
tude. charge upon it the destruction
of 10000 immortal souls, and bid you
wake up to the magnitude of the evil.
l charge you in the first place to
stand aloof from all books that give
false pictures of life. Life is neither
a tragedy nor farce. Men are not
all either knaves or heroes. Women
are neither angels nor furies. And yet
If you depended upon much of the lit
erature of the day you would get the
idea that life, instead Of being some
thing earnest, som ething practical, is
a fitful and fantastic and extiava-
CANT thing. How poorly prepared are
that young man and woman for the
duties of to-day who spent last night
wading through brilliant passages de-
scriptive of magnificent knavery and
wickedness! The man will be looking
all day long for his heroine in the Of
fee, by the forge, in the factory, in
the counting room, and he will not
find her, and he will be dissatisfied
A man who gives himself up to the in
discriminate reading of novels will be
nerveless, inane and nuisance. He
will be fit neither for the store, nor
the shop nor the field. A woman who
gives herself up to the indiscriminate
reading of novels will be untitled for
the duties of wife, mother, sister
daughter. There she is, hair dishev'
eled countenance vacant, cheeks pale
hands trembling, bursting into tears
at midnight over the fate of some UNI
fortunate lover; in the daytime, wher
she ought to be busy, staring by the
half hour at nothing biting her fin
ger nails into the quick. The carpet
that was plain before will be palmer
after having wandered through 70
nance all night long in tessellatet
halls of castles. And your industrious
companion will be more unattractiyC
than ever, now that you have walked
in the romance through parks will
plumed princesses or lounged in thu
arbor with the polished desperate
Oh, these confirmed novel readers
They are untitled for this life, which
is tremendous discipline. The,
know not how to go through the fur
naces of trial through which the,
must pass, and they are untitled TO
world where everything we gain w
achieve by hard and long continued
work.
Again, ] charge you to stand of
, from all those books which corrup
the Imagination and infame the pas
sions. / do not refer now to tia
kind of book which the villain ha
under his coat waiting for the schoo
to get out, and then, looking bot
ways to see that there is no police
man around the block, offers the boo
to your son OH BIS way home. I d
not speak of that kind of literature
but that which evades the law ali
:, comes out in polished style, ana wit
acute plot sounds the tocsin tina
;, rouses up all the baser passions G
the soul. To-day, under the nostril
: of the people, there is fetid, reel
ing, unwashed literature, enough t
poison all the fountains of public vii
tue and smite your sons and daug}
a tiers as with the wing of destroyin
: angel, and it is time that the minis
a tiers of the Gospel blew the trumpe
. and rallied the forces of righteous
= ness, all armed to this great battl
. against a depraved literature.
e Again, abstain from those book
e which are apologize of crime. 1t
e sad thing that some of the best an
/! most beautiful bookaindery and som
= of the finest rhetoric have bee
l. brought to make sin attractive. Vic
is a horrible thing anyhow. It
: born in shame, and it dies howlin
It in the darkness. In this world it
e scourged with a whip of scorpion
v but afterward the thunders of God
> wrath pursue it across boundle'
o desert, beating it with ruin and wo