Greene County herald. (Leakesville, Miss.) 1898-current, 1910-10-21
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} Novel Reading Dangers

A new English sensational novel
S advertised as having caused the
ieath OF a reader, the excitement of
he story producing herat failure.
This is probably a press agents story,
The rsal cause of most fatalities
among the readers Of modern novels
being the result of their having been
borrowed to death instead of being
lnduly thrilled.
1t is not the risk of their lives. but
the risk of their morals and the sam
ity of their view point that endangers
excessive novel readers, however, and
that makes the wholesale establish
ment of free public libraries almost
as much of a menace to the well-be-
ing of the country as would be the
opening up of free saloons or opium
joints.
This seems a peSsimistic view to
take of what has been considered an
unmiXed blessing and b~enefaction,
but no n who takes the trouble to
observe what the effect of having
an unlimited supply of fictiin, obtain
able without money and without price,
on which to gorge themselves, has
on women and young boys, can fail
to see that novel reading has become
a pernicious evil that is fostered BY
the free library.
OUR REVERENCE FOR A BOOK.
In America we are still so half
baked ed~Ucationally that we have a
superstitious reverence for the print
ed page. To us "a books a book,
though there be nothing in it." Wo-
men give themselves superior airs
about being literary because they al
ways read THE Six Best Sellers,
and parents beam with pride and joy
when they see their children engross-
ed in reading, apparently unaware
that in the book the child may be
keeping company with the most de-
PRAYED characters it is possible to
conceive, and is being familiarized
with the filth Of the cutters.
Not lorY ago the father of a preco-
cious you-sster of twelve boosted to
me that his son ~habitually read two
novels a day. that inasmuch as the
public library only allowed him to
draw out one book a day. he and an
other young companion, who was also
a novel iend, each got a novel every
morning, devoured the story at a sit
ting, and then exchanged books in
order that they might be provided
with their afternoon dope of fiction.
1t never seemed to c to the
father what the effect OF all this ex-
cessive novel reading would have up
on the boy. OF Of the mental indises-
ton it must surely give him to
his little head SO full of plots and
counter-plots, seasoned with such
highly spiced episodes, and soaked in
such a sauce Of senSualism. 1t were
almost better for such a boy not to
be able to read at all than to read SO
much of the things he should not
read at his time in life.
This lad is an extreme type Of the
novel-reading ~younSSter, but there
are far too many young boys in his
class, thtn-chested, anemic little fell
lows, who are being given a post
graduate course in vice by reading
erotic novels that leave no phase Of
d~ecadence u~nrevealed. We have laws
to prevent the sale of liquor and CT
garettes to minors. 1t should be
equally a crime to put within the
reach Of children books that are every
whit as demoralizing as whiskey or
tobacco.
Little account has been taken of
the effect of novel reading upon wo-
men, but in all good truth it is every
bit as demoralizing for a woman to
get the opiOum habit, or the drink
habit, as it is to get the novel habit.
1t is the novel, more than anything
else, that is responsible for the alb
normal woman, the divorce. the
young girl who goes astray.
Nor is this as strange and Illogical
is it sounds. Take a young girl who
is pretty and poor, and whose days
are spent behind a counter or before
a cook stove. She acquires the novel
reading habit easily enough because
it is the one cheap way by which she
can escape from her own hard life
into a fairy world. In these books
she reads Of how Nellie the Beautiful
Cloak Model smiles upon a stranger,
who Immediately falls in love with
her and marries her. and takes her
away to live in unimasinable SPLEEN
dor, or how Sir Guy de Montmor-
ency falls in love with fair Elaine a.
Ia is scrubbing down the steps, and
I...rries her in spite Of all his naughty
kindred.
Such a girl, with a mind full of i'm
possibilities, with the idea always Dc
fore her that her beauty is going TO
pave the way for her to ease and lux
ury, is on the lookout for adventure
and is ready at any minute to throw
I'D her honest job and go away with
any good looking scamp who happens
along.
Just how many girls are lured into
the evil life by the rosy pictures of
the under world drawn by %novelists
for nine-tenths of the divorces. There
are tens of thousands of idle wives.
living around in boarding houses and
hotels, with nothinfig to do except to
deYour. novel after novel. Their days
are passed in a passion-laden atmos-
nhere Of hi~ph-DresSllre and
when they are forced to come down
TO earth everything about them seems
mean and tawdry, especially their
husbands.