The Greenville times., 1900-08-04

ton with other books, cannot help bu
be ennobling and purifying; but, alas
for the loathsome and impure literatur
that has come in the shape of novels
like freshet overflowing all the bank
of decency and common sense! The.
are coming from some of the most cele
, brated publishing houses. They arr
coming with recommendations of som,
of our religious newspapers. They
lie on your center table to curse YOU
children and blast with their inferna
fires generations unborn. You fine
these books in the desk of the schoo
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 al
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 a bad book! Every
where, everywhere, an unclean litera-
tude. l charge upon it the destruction
of 10000 immortal souls, and 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 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 something practical, is
a 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
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 a 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 uTi-
fortunate lover; in the daytime, when
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 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 a tremendous discipline. They
know not how to go through the fur
naces of trial through which they
must pass, and they are untitled for
a world where everything we gain we
achieve by hard and long continued
work.
Again, abstain from all 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 and
the bad. Which stuck to you? The
bad The heart of most people is
like sieve, which let's the small par
ticles of gold fall through, but keeps
the great cinders. Once IN awhile
there is a mind like loadstone which,
plunged amid steel and brass filings,
gathers up the steel and repels the |
brass. But it is generally exactly the
opposite. If you attempt to plunge /
through hedge of burs to get one
blackberry, you will get more burs
than backuerries. You cannot afford
to read bad book, however good you
are. You say: "The influence is in
significant" I tell you that the
scratch of pin has sometimes pro-
duced lockjaw. Alas, if through GU
riosity, as many do, you pry into an
evil book, your curiosity is as danger
GUS as that of the man who would
take torch into gunpowder mill
merely to see whether it would really
blow up or not.
In a menagerie in New York a map
put his arm through the bars of a
black leopard's cage. The animals
hide looked so sleek and bright and
beautiful. He just stroked it once.
The monster seized him, and he drew
forth a hand torn and mangled and
Oh, touch not evil, even
with the faintest stroke! Though it
may be glossy and beautiful, touch it
not, lest you pull forth your soul torn
and bleeding from the clutch of the
leopard. But" you say, "how can
find out whether book is good or
bad without reading it ?" There is al
ways something suspicious about a
bad book. l never knew an exception
suspicious in the index or
style of illustration. This venomous
reptile always carries a warning
rattle.
Again. I charge you to stand off
from all those books which corrupt
the Imagination and inflame the pas
sions. / do not refer now to that
kind of book which the villain has
under his coat waiting for the school
to get out, and :hen, looking both
ways to see that there is no police
man around the block, offers thu book
to your son OH LIS way home. I do
not speak of that kind of literature,
but that which evades the law and
comes out 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