The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1900-08-03

1 anu hdnUOn anu NUM- anu arthur anO
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 arehealthfully redolent with the
breath of the seaweed and the air OF
the American forest. Charles Kings
ley has smitted the morbidaty of the
world and led a great many to appre-
ciate 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 a plea for the
poor and the anatAema of injustice,
and there are score of novelistic pens
to-day doing mighty work for God and
Righteousness.
Now, I 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 freshet overhowing 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 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 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. It is
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 Htera-
tude. I 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
SGdud d1OO1 1IO1l OOOhS blIoO SAfC
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
ftful and fantastic and extrava
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 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,
1uCIc Sic lSS ud1I u1SuCN~
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 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, I charge you to stand off
from all those books which corrupt
the imagination and infame the pas
sions. I 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 the book
to your son OH his way home. I do
not speak of that kind of literature,
but that which evades the law and
comes out in polished style, and 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 a fetid. reek-
ing, unwashed literature, enough to
poison all the fountains of public vir-
tue and smite your sons and daugh- |
ters as with the wing of a destroying
angel, and it 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 a depraved literature.
Again, abstain from those books |
which are apologetic of crime. 1t is |
a sad thing that some of the best and |
of the finest rhetoric have been |
brought to make sin attractive. Vice |
is a horrible thing anyhow. It is |
born III shame, and it dies bowling |
in the darkness. In this world it is |
scourged with a whip of scorpions, |
but afterward the thunders of Gods
wrath pursue it across a boundless
desert, beating iS with ruin and woe
When you come to paint carnality.
do not paint it as looking from behind
L .