The Redwood gazette. [volume] (Redwood Falls, Minn.) 1873-1940, 1903-12-09
Continued from last week.

Anything approximating thor
ough consideration of the subject
OF proper reading for children re-
quires careful scrutiny of the So
called up-to-date newspaper. The
modern newspaper has as many
sides as the traditional old woman S
dumpling, and as many colors as
the rainbow. There are newSpa-
pers which are good and then 9th
ers which are bad; but nearly all OF
them are both good and bad. The
country weekly is far below the city
daily in its grammatical and gener-
al literary aspect, but it is fairer in
it's treatment of men and measures,
and publishes much less that is
harmful to youthful readers than
the city dailies.
The city daily has as many depart
ments as a department store in a
metropolitan city, and each depart
ment has head. 1t publishes un-
der these different heads, or CLASH
fications, the news of the world,
more or less condensed. Besides
the regular quota of news, the Sun
day papers are so loaded with book
reviews, editionrils, special features
and miscellany that they are liter
airy omnibus, heterogeneous con-
glomeratlon of fact, fancy, fun, froth
and fad. There are sensational ac-
counts of suits for SANDER, malprac-
tice, blackmail, breach of promise
and divorce; and arrests for every
offense in the curriculum of crime;
trials which abound in the abomin-
alton of the depraved, or reek with
the stencil often found in official or
social life.
We are treated to quarter-page
pictures of pugilists whose faces
beam with that Intelligence usually
found in the countenance of cat
fish, with apologies to the catfsh)
and the muscles of whose arms stand
out as warning of the superiority,
in their case, of matter over mind.
We learn all about the upper cut, "
the 'solar pleXus, and the KNOCK
out blow, and wallow through
column after column of grammarless
slush which the sporting editor
furnishes in his arduous though
unsuccessful attempt to be witty.
We are treated to accounts of muir
ders and suicides, some of them
real, others imaginary.
When a society lady entertains
Gin honor" of friend we learn, not
only upon whom fell the imperisha-
BILE honor of dishing up the frappe.
or who performed the responsible
exacting function of pouring the
coffee, but what each lady wore.
The description of the gowns is
bound to be accurate, for society
editor on one of the city dailies once
told me that at the beginning of the
society season he ascertained from
every society lady in the city des-
cription of her party dress and en-
tered it in little book opposite her
name. Then as the society events
occurred he had only to procure a
list of those present then turn to
his little book to learn what each
wore.
The accounts of murders, sui
cides, etc or the suspicious thereof,
with all their wierd, grewsome de
tails, are the most harmful kind of
reading for children, because it
arOuses morbid interest in things
which are, not understood and can
not be understood until made plain
by the wisdom and experience,
which only come with years. Such
reading, if it does not poison the
mind, leads it from its proper sub
jects into channels whose atmos-
phere is unwholesome. The news
rapers publish these things because
they claim they are demanded by
the public. The ladies who take so
much pleasure in reading what they
wear in society may demand it, but
they are only part of the public.
Girls are not in anv cpaoial mood IF