The McCook tribune. (McCook, Neb.) 1886-1936, 1900-08-03

out OF the 100 novels In this day are
Daleful and destructive TO the last de-
gree. A pure work of fiction Is history
and poetry combined. 1t Is a history
Of things around us with the licenses
world can never pay the debt which
1t owes to such writer's 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 better
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 seaweed and the air of
the American forest. Charles Kings
ley has smitten the morbidity of the
world and led a great many to appre-
ciate the poetry of sound health,
strong muscles and fresh air. Thack-
cray did a grand work in c~aricaturing
the pretenders to 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 today doing mighty
work for God and righteousness.
EnnobIing and Purifying.
Now, l say, books like these, read
at right times and read in right pro-
portion 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 celebrated publishing houses.
They are coming with recommended
ton of some of our religious newspa-
pers. They lie on your center tables
to curse your children and blast with
their Internal fires generations I'M
born. 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 recep-
ton room. You see a light in your
child's room late at night. You sud
denly go in and say, What are you
doing?" Il am reading" What are
you reading?" "a book You look
at the book. 1t is a bad book. Where
did you get it?" Il borrowed it." Alas,
there are always those abroad who
would like to loan your son or daugh-
ter a bad book, Everywhere, every
where, an unclean literature. + charge
upon it the destruction of 1 $1,000 i'm
mortal souls, and l bid you wake up
to the magnitude of the evil.
l shall take all the worlds litera-
ture-good novels and bad, travels
true and false, histories faithful and
incorrect, legends beautiful and mon
strous, all tracts, all chronicles, all
poems, all family, city, state and ma
tional libraries-and pile them up Il
a pyramid of literature, and then
shall bring to bear upon it sol
grand, glorious, infallible, unmistd
able Christian principles. God h
me to speak with r%eferenuce to
last account and help you to listen.
l charge you in the first place
stand aloof from all books that 6
false pictures of life. Life is neitH
a tragedy nor a farce. Men are I
all either knaves or heroes. WomM
are neither angels nor furies. And
yet if you depended upon much of The
literature of the day you would get
an idea that life instead of being
something earnest, something practi-
cal, is a ftful and fantastic and eX-
travagant thing. How poorly prepar-
ed are that young man and m for
the duties of today who spent last
night wading through brilliant pas
sages descriptive of magnificent
knavery and ~wickedness! The man
will be looking all day long for his
heroine in the Office, by the forge, IL
the factory, in the counting room, and
he will not find her, and he will be
dissatisfied. A man who gives him
self up to the indiscriminate reading
OF novels will be nerVeless, inane and
a nuisance. He will be fit neither for
store, nor the shop, nor the field. A
woman who gives herself up to the in
discriminate reading of novels will be
untitled for the duties of wife, mother,
sister, daughter. There she is, hair
~disheyeled, countenance vacant,
cheeks pale, hands trembling, burst
ing into tears at midnight over the
fate of some unfortunate lover; in
the daytime, when she ought to be
busy, staring by the half hour at
nothing, biting her finger nails into
the quick. The carpet that was plain
before will be palmer after having
wandered through a romance 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 manc
through parks with plumed princesses
or lounged in the arbor with the pol
ished desperate. Oh, these confirmed
novel readers! They are unified for
life, which is a tremendous disci-
pine. They know not how to go
through the furnaces of trial through
which they must pass, and they are
untitled for a world where everything
gain we achieve by hard and long