The Grenada sentinel. [volume] (Grenada, Miss.) 1868-1955, 1900-08-04

the licenses and the assumed names Of
poetry. The world can never pay the
debt which it owes to such writers OF
fiction as Hawthorne and Mckenzie
and Landon and Hunt and Arthur and
Others whose names are familiar to all.
The follies of high life were never bet
ter exposed than by Miss Edgeworth.
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 morbidlty OF the
world and led a great many to appre-
ciate the poetry of sound health, strong
muscles and fresh air. Thackeray did
Q grand work in caricaturing the pre-
tenders to gentility and high blood.
Dickens has built his W monument In
his books, which are a plea for the
poor and the anatAema OF injustice,
and there are a score of novelistic pens
to-day doing mighty work for God n
righteousness.
Now, 1 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,
like a freshet overlooking all the banks
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 fud
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
a light in your child's room late at
night. You suddenly go in and say:
"What are you doing?" II am read
ing" "What are you reading?" "a
book" You look at the book. 1t is a
bad book. "Where did you get it?" u
borrowed it," Alas, there are always
those abroad who like to loan to your
son or daughter a bad book! Every
where, everywhere, an unclean htera-
tude. Lcharge upon it the destruction
of 5000 immortal souls, and I bid you
wake up to the magnitude of the evil.
/ charge you in the first place to
stand aloof from all books that give
false pictures of life. Life is neither
a tragedy o a 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
e~rature of the day you would get the
idea that life, instead of being some
thing earnest, something practical, il
: a fitful and fantastic and extrava
CANT thing. How poorly prepared arr
-, that young man and woman for the
! duties of to-day who spent last nigh
: wading through brilliant passages de
scriptive of magnificent knayery ant
; wickednessi The man will be looking
Iall day long for his heroine in the Of
: fee, by the forge, in the factory, il
J the counting room, and he will no
find her, and he will be dissatisfied
v A man who gives himself up to the in
e discriminate reading of novels will b
8 nerveless, inane and a nuisance. II
will be fit neither for the store, no
the shop nor the field. A woman VIII
gives herself up to the indiscriminat
reading of novels will be untitled TO
q the duties of wife, mother, sister
daughter. There she is, hair dishev
n eled, c~ountenance vacant, cheeks pail
q hands trembling, bursting into tear
l. at midnight over the fate of some III
n fortunate lover; in the daytime, whe
n she ought to be busy, staring by tn
le half hour at nothing biting her fl
g ger nails into the quick. The carpt
y that was plain before will be plaint
H. after having wandered through a r.
T. nance all night long in tessellate
halls of castles. And your industrio'
st companion will be more u~nattracti'
rs than ever, now that you have wake
ne in the through parks wit
n plumed ~princesses or lounged in Il
C. arbor with the polished desperad
t. Oh, these confirmed novel reader
ne They are untitled for this life. whit
Is is a tremendous discipline. TIL
es know not how to go through the fu
naces of trial through which tn
'e- must pass, and they are untitled +
an a world where everything we gain
achieve by hard and long %continu
at work. ALL.
Again, I charge you to stand
from all those books which CORFU
sn the imagination and infame the p,
sions. T. do net refer now to I'll
% kind of book which the villain h
under his coat waiting for the scht
to get out, and then. looking be
r. ways to see that there is no poll
man around the block, offers ths bo
,.r to your son on his way home. I
not speak of that kind of lite-atu
,nss but that which evades the law a
comes out in polished style, and wi
W. acute plot sounds the tocsin IL
rouses up all the baser passions
the soul. To-day, under the nostI
of the people, there is a fetid, re-
hat ing, unwashed literature, enough
poison all the fountains of public '
tue and smite your IONS and dauj