The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1900-08-03

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 folies 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 the air Of
the American forest. Charles Kings
ley has smitted the morbidtty Of the
world and led a great many TO appre-
ciatR the poetry of sound health, strong
muscles and fresh air. Thackeray did
a grand work in caricaturing the pre-
tenders to gentility 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, l say, books like these, read at
right times and read in right proper
tion 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 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
a light in your chi't's room late at
night. You sudden s. go ia and say:
what are you dC..L.. IL am read
ing" "What are you reaGing?" ~
book" You lool; q tie book II is a
bad book. "Wher. g.. sou get it?" 81
borrowed it," A.as. here are always
those abroad who HE 10 loan to your
son or daughter a bad book! Every
where, everywhere, an unclean litera-
tude. | charge upon il the destruction
y
wake up to the magnitude of the evil.
| charge YOU i'm the first place to
stand aloof from all books that rive
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 vet
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
n fitful and fantastic and extrava-
giant thing. How poorly prepared are
that Young man and woman for the
duties of to-day who spent last night
wadinP 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 a nuisance. He
will be At 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 un-
fortunate lover; in the daytime, when
she ought 10 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 a ro-
nance all night long in tessellated
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 princesses or lounged in the
arbor with the polished desperate
Oh, these confirmed novel readers!
They are untitled for this life, which
is tremendous discipline, They