New-York tribune., 1916-06-18
f(I A ND who are you?'
"A ..Nick carter =.

Il "'Not the famous government de
tective?'
The samep
Hands flew up! Wild cries rang out"
No longer do boys read such stirring stuff
as this. They don't sit in school a-quiver with
excitement, their eyes staring at the latest
issue of Beadle's Library carefully folded in
side their Biographies. Beadle's Library is
extinct. Nick Carter is dead.
S'death! The movies have done their foul
work well
Boys are shrewd bargainers at buying
thrills. They are thrill connosseurs. They
have learned where to purchase thrills which
have a much higher rate of oscillation per
second than any quivers or quavers furnished
by the wild adventures Of Deadwood Dick,
Rosebud Bob or Old Sleuth. They have burst
from the thraldom of the nickel novel.
The movies have dashed to the rescue.
Boys know that they can get shaker thrills
by seeing one of the Farnums in an adapta.
tion of The Sky Pilot" or Pearl White in
a Parlay Of Perils, than they can get by read
ing a fve-cent novel, even with the added
danger OF reading it under the eye of a sus-
picious teacher.
Twenty years ago every boy that ran away
from home teed off, so to speak, on jitney
novel; When he was finally bunkered in
police station fifty miles from the old home
stead he admitted that the nickel novel started
him on his career of crime.
To-day the movies furnish him his blood
and thunder inspiration. No boy has time
enough TO study nickel novels in order to learn
the rules of questing for treasure. One good
movie drama can teach him these rules; and
it can teach him besides the whole art of
barroom fighting as practised by a hero in
the Wild West.
Why merely read about it when you can
SEE how it's done?
! remember reading a nickel novel in which
the villain hurled the hero to the floor and
pounced upon his recumbent frame. He
raised on high knife keen as razor, which
he was about to poke into the hero's heart.
Near by lay the heroine, securely bound She
kicked violently in her struggles to free her
self so that she might rush to the hero's res
cue. Off flew one of her slippers. 1t came
down on the breast of the hero just as the
glittering knife descended. The fell blade
plunged deep into the heel of the slipper and
the hero was saved.
Every screen melodrama stretches the long
arm Of coincidence further than this.
A few days ago a boy about fifteen years
old. who said his name was Francisco Pupa.
entered the New York Newsboys' Home. He
showed a piece Of fiat, polished bone, on one
side of which was scratched a strange design,
and told the following story TO the superin-
tendent, Henry J. Spring:
"My mother died long time ago, and my
father was shot about year ago in a quar-
rel over gold nugget. He was a miner
at Golden. Cal. When he knew that he was
dying he called me to his bunk in the little
cabin where he lived and gave me this bone
"'Take this, my boy said he. TO Clarence
J. Brown, the New York banker. Show him
the sign on it and he will give you $4,000.
1t is your inheritance
"Then he died.
81 have walked all the way across the con
tinent. 1t has been a hard journey, but now
I'm here and my troubles are over"
A policeman was called in. He listened TO
the story listlessly.
Straits" said he. "The movies!"
Investigation proved that the boy had never