The Columbian. [volume] (Bloomsburg, Pa.) 1866-1910, 1903-08-27
The MORAL OF A SAD STORY.

pathlze with the parents Of the mis-
guided school girl in a neighboring
city in the grief which their daughter
has brought upon them. AT the same |
time it is impossible to overlook the |
fact that they seem to be in some
measure responsible for their own
trouble and their case points moral
which it is the duty Of the newspaper
to enforce.
This young girl, we are told in the
dispatches, is IS years old, pupil III
high school, and was much gwen to
reading sensational fiction. Her pa.
rents were eminently respectable"
and their daughter had enjoyed all
the advantages of a refined home.
Last Friday she disappeared from her
home, and the anxious inquiries made
for her reveal the fact that she found
IN a travelling theatrical troupe man
who fills her ideal of hero of ro
nance.
The case of this girl is not an ex-
ceptional one. Every reader can re
call others like it. The cause of her
downfall is the same as is at work in
thousands of households. The girl
was permitted to fill her young imag-
nation with false, delusive and un-
wholesome notions of human nature
and human life, by reading the fever.
ish stories that come from the Mn
erva press, and the fight from home
and It's direct consequences are the
direct and legitimate result of the
training she has been permitted to re-
ceive from the books and newspapers
of that pernicious sort. Who is re-
sponsiblel Plainly her parents, who
should have taken both negative and
positive measures of prevention who
should have taken pains to keep un-
wholesome books out of their young
daughters hands, and equal pains to
place wholesome ones within her
reach, that her taste for reading
might be SO proftably cultivated as
to be a source OF moral strength rath-
er than of moral weakness.
That which is true in this case is
true also in the case Of all families in
which there are children. Ours is a
reading age, and our children will
read something; it is for parents to
take care that the things read shall
be wholesome things. 1t is not
enough that bad books shall be KEEP;
out of their hands; unless good books,
entertaining books which are at the
same time free from all manner of
taint, are kept within the reach ofthe
youth Of our time, access to bad books
cannot be prevented by merely re.
pressive measures. Our large liberty
of the press amounts pretty nearly to
unbrldled license, and books and
newspapers are published, circulated
and read, which are as positively per-
nicious to young readers as are the
books which the law prohibits. Books
of this unwholesome sort are sold on
railway trains, kept in circulating
Libraries, sometimes even IN Sunday
school libraries, and not infrequently
are found upon center tables. They
are no, at all improper books in the
common acceptatlon of the term, but
merely intensely emotional ones
melo dramatic romances, but they are
as pernlcious to young and imagina-
tive persons as if they were not scrup
ulously "proper as they commonly
are.
In a word, there are altogether toe
many novels and romances of tht
third and fourth and fifteenth rat,
printed and read, for the good of th'
public. and there are too few book
of a more wholesome kind bought b,
heads of families generally. A gooc
library in the house, wise man ha
SAID, is in itself liberal education t
the children of the house; we ma,
add that 1t is a moral character Il
them also; but the power OF books t.
influence character and life is not b
any means confined to good books
bad books and bad story papers-b
which we mean simply unwholesome
ly exciting books end periodicals-ar
moral poisons in any house into whic
they come.-Ef.