The L'Anse sentinel. (L'Anse, L.S., Mich.) 18??-current, 1900-08-04

debt which II owes TO such writers o.
fiction as Hawthorne and McKenzl,
and Landon ard Hunt and Arthur ant
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 BEAUTIFULLY redolent with the
breath of the seaweed and he air of
the American forest. Charles Kings
ley has shifted 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 10 gentility and high blood.
Dickens has built his own monument in
his books. which are a 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 al
right times and read in right proper
| tion with other books. cannot help but
| be ernobling and purifying; but, alas,
| for the loathsome and impure literature
that has come in the shape of novels,
! like II freshet overlooking all the banks
of dccency an6. common sense! They
are coming from some of the most cele-
brated publishing houses. They are
coming with recommendation 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?" Il am read
ing" What are you reading? ~
hook" You look N the book. II is
bad book. Where did you get it?" II
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-
| tuGc. | charge upon il the destruction
! Of 10000 immortal souls and bid YOU
wake up to the magnitude ofthe evil.
charge YOU in the first place TO
stand aloof from all books that give
false pictures of life. Life is neither
a tragedy nor a farce. Men are not
all either knayes 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. something practical. is
titful and fantastic and eNtraya-
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-
scriptiyc of magnificent knavery and
wickedncSs. The man will he. 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.
! 4 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. y woman who
gives herself up TO the indiscriminaf
reading Of novels will be untitled for
the duties of wife. mother, sister
daughter. There she is. hair DISNEY
cled ,countenance vacant. cheeks pale,
hands trembling. bursting into tears
at midnight over the fate of some un-
fortunate lover; in the daytime. when
she ought TO be busy. staring by the
half hour al nothing biting her fin.
ger nails into the quick. The carpet
that was plain before will be palmer
after having wandered through a rO-
nance all night long in tesscllated
halls of castles. And your industrious
companion will be more unattractive
than ever. now that you have walked
in the romance through parks with
plumed princrsscs or loungcd in the
arbor with the polished desperate.
Oh. these confirmed novel readers!
They are untitled for this life, which
is a tremendous discipline. They
know not how 10 go through the fur
naces of trial through which they
must pass, and they are untitled for
world where everything we gain we
achieve by hard and long continued
work.
Again, charge you to stand of
from all those books which corrupt
the imagination and inflame the pas.
sions. ! do not refer now to tl'at
kind of book which the villain has
under his coat waiting for the school
to get out. and .h,n, looking both
ways 10 see that there is no police
man around the block, offers thu book
to your son on his way home. J do
not speak OF that kind of literature,
but that which evadcs the law and
comes ont in polished style, AMI with
acute plot sounds the tocsin that
rouses up all the baser passions OF
the soul. To-day. under the nostrils
Of the people. there is fetid. reek-
| ing. Jnwashed literature. enough 10
poison all the fountains of public yir-
tue and smite your SONS and daugh-
tiers as with the wing of n destroying
angel. and il Is time that the minis
ters of the Gospel blew the trumpet
and rallied the forces of righteous
ness, all armed to this great battle
against depraved literature.