Evening star., 1933-12-23
THIS AND THAT
BY CHARLES E. TRACEWELL.

wider circles. in his reading, but reads
simply for the breath of adventure, the
sense OF achieving movement.
|
The sense of movement Is secured in
all such fiction. and often it is attained
more surely in these "thrillers" than
in many more artistic and finished
performance Of the printed word.
The boy In the old days who would
have listened to the advice of his
elders, except in rare instances, would
never have read a one of the fine tales
OF the Two more redskins bit the dust"
school,
1t was to the credit of those bows. as
! it Is to the credit of all boys. that they
trusted their own Judgment in such
matters.
They felt they could discriminate, in
other words
They did not need teacher to stand
over them to tell them what they liked.
They did not need the kindly
whiskered faces Of the New England
poets, gazing down at them from the
black frame over teachers desk, to
compel them to acknowledge that Snow
Bound" was a fine piece Of work.
! Similarly, every real boy liked to read
about Buffalo Bill, and the Liberty
Boys OF TO-" What a good title that
was. How it made our glorious colonials
come alive" as the saying is, to the
small boys Of that generation of readers!
IL Is customary, in writing of these
forbidden fruits of the pen, to describe
how they were read in barns, and the
like, in fear and trembling that an out
RACED parent would discover the small
culprit.
Some boys, however, were more for
tunate. Their reading tastes were re-
garded as sort OF mere weakness,
which they would outgrow, along with
| knock-kneeS and freckles.
A far more terrible offense was to be
caught reading Plutarch. That hor-
rible old man, according to Aunt Maria,
who happened to be on visit, should
have been jailed for writing spicy
stories about the Spartans.
PlutarchS unvarniShed account Of the
habits of the Spartans was just little
| too much for good Aunt Maria, who
always wore four sets of petticoats, one
inside the other
Since she had never heard Of Plu-
tarch's Lives" they were to be looked
upon with suspicion, of course.
Just what made her open the volume
plump in the middle Of the account of
the life of the Grecian warriors is a
matter which time has not solved.
Aunt Maria always had a genius for
opening book at the wrong place.
X X X
The perennial charge against the
pulp paper" stories is that the reading
| of them will spoil ones taste for bet
ter things"
BoSh!
They help form ones taste. as a mat.
ter of pure fact. because they give one
much basic material, material for dis
elimination.
Few Of these stories will last forever.
But who would want them to?
The young man who spent his leisure
reading good tales of adventure. COM
monty labeled "corking," is helping
himself find himself in the reading line,
The more he reads, of all sorts of
writings, the better he will judge in
the future what suits him. what Is
worth while, what is first class.
The narrative poem Is the Oldest form
of adventure story Almost as old is
the tale. The theme Of the antago-
mist is rather stressed in pulp paper"
! fiction. but if any one doubts that it is
a perennial theme. let him recall The
| Three Little Pigs" whose search for
safety against danger typifles the life
of man