The Hickman courier. [volume] (Hickman, Ky.) 1859-current, 1900-08-03

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ter exposed than by Miss Edgeworth
The memories of Che 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
lev has shifted the morbid.ty 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 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
ton 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
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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 10 curse your
children and blast with their Internal
! fires generations unborn. You find
these books in the desk Of the school
III Z, tho sruvly of The xouru 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?" Il am read
ing "What are you reading?' "A
book" You look at the book. IL is
bad book. where did you get it?' Il
borrowed it," Alas. there are always
those abroad who like 10 loan 10 your
son or daughter bad book!e Every
where. everywhere. an unclean litera-
tude. / charge upon it the destruction
of 10000 immortal souls, and bid you
wake up to the magnitude of the evil.
l charge you in the first place 20
stand aloof from all books that give
false pictures of life. Life is neither
a tragedy nor a farce. Men are not
all either knaves or heroes. Women
are neither angels nor furies. And yet
II 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
fitful 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
wickednessl 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 no;
find her, and he will be dissatisfied.
A man who gives himself up 10 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 IL. hair dishev-
eled, countenance vacant. cheeks pale,
hands trembling. bursting into tears
at midnight over the fate of some I'M
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 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 readersl
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
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 10 that
kind of book which the villain has
under his coat waiting for the school
TO get out, and chen. looking both
ways to see that there is no police
man around the block. offers thu book
10 your son Oh BIS way home. 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 fetid. reek-
ing. unwashed literature, enough to
poison all the fountains of public vir-
tue and smite your sons and daugh-
tiers as with the wing of destroying
angel, and IL is time that the minis
tiers 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. II is
sad thing that some of the best and
most beautiful bookbindery and some
of the finest rhetoric have been
brought TO make sin attractive. Vice
is horrible thing anyhow 4 is
born in shame, and il dies bowling
in the darkness. In this world ID Is