Evening times-Republican. [volume] (Marshalltown, Iowa) 1890-1923, 1918-05-23
TRUTH STRANGER THAN NICKEL LIBRARY.

Times change in literature as in all
else. Boy fiction Is peculiarly adapt
able. It changes promptly with the
time and the opportunity. Nowhere
does new occasions teach new duties
quicker than to the authors who sup
ply the thrtiiers Of the nickel libraries
l. FIR instance: Remember how fifty
years ago you hid out with Fennimore
Cooper's Indian stories and read Deer
SLAYER avidly tho in that hard shell
family novel reading and card playing
broke even as the DEVILS own traps
And later, how those paper covered
"Beadle's library" held you with tales
Of Dan'l Boone and simon Glrtg
dressed to the most fantastic magma
ton Of a kid? Perhaps you recall that
in those days the short whiplike re-
port" sounded thru the primeval woods
and as the savage Wayandot fell and
oled with giaItIls cycS, the 52casE,n
clad hunter stepped from his leafy
covert while the light smoke drifted
from the muzzle Of a long rifle. Usual
" there ensued some slight converse
ton between the shooter and shootee
referring to past incidents or rapine
and murder. the savage chanted his
deathsonz and with a conclusive move
ment Of his mighty limbs stiffened IN
death The hunter Of those days al
ways scalped his prey and never called
bear anything but bar.
Then still later the tale usually
opeend with crack, crack, crack!
That was after one Mr.. Colt had sue
ceeded in getting six shooter to work
fairly we'll in actual warfare ana the
cracking noise worked just as we'll in
detective story In a city slum as with
Buffalo Bill in bitter combat with the
Sioux. Remember how fierce that
word Sioux looked out from one Of
Beadle's masterpieces?
But nickel library that depended
on long rifle and Indians or that
sought to toll the busy nickel from the
pocket of youth by crack, crack, crack
ing wouldn't get to first base now
adays. Today the daring youth sails
the clouds in specially designed
monplane Of his own invention an air
ship that on paper has the liberty
ways from the jack. He sits on the
edge of a cloud with rowing eye, spies
the whole blamed enemy escadrille as
it bears down to bomb a hospital and
kill a few Red Cross women. Diving
Almost perpendicularly at frightful
speed he looses belt Of steel jacKeted
bullets into each enemy plane as he
passes. He never misses. One after
another the boches tumble flaming to
the earth. He follows them down in a
nose spin, watching grimly and with
set lips-"set lips is about all that is
left Of the ancient vocabulary, hunter
and sleuth and scout always watched
his victim die with set lips-and sets
off gayly looking for another covey.
But after all the change in the nickel
library isn't greater then the actual
change. The nickel librarian has not
created anything. but merely made tho
most of the conditions and marvels
men have created. The boy hero is
the same, but he has found improved
machinery for heroing. The Kentucky
rifle that poked neat and effective
holes in the waistcoats Of Pakenham' 8
veterans at New Orleans Is as out
! worn as the cradle of great grand
fathers harvest. The coonskin cap has
given way to the steel helmet. So has
the single shovel pillow yielded place
| to the two row cultivator with a trac-
tor as motive power. Dynamite has
come into the world to tear rocks and
| Old Ben Franklin fshed for electricity
with door key as bait men sail the
far clouds and challenge the eagles.
Jules Vernes Nautilus lives as the
deadly watersnake Of butcher, strik-
ing alike the armed and the innocent
And so on and so forth.
! Neither the Imagination Of the SEN
sational fiction writer nor even that o,
| one George Creel. who by some is
classed as the most athletic imaginer
Of the century, can overrun the actua'
facts of human accomplishment. All
the nickel library Is doing, all tina,
Beadle or Cooper or Verne has done
is to have kept up with the procession
and perhaps skip on a little ahead
while human invention stopped fol
meals.
Scott county got on without OILED
roads many years. II the prices shoult