THE NEW SUNDAY-SCHOOL LIBRARY AT CLAYTON.
By A. E. C.
"YES it's just as I expected—milk-and-water, sentiment and twaddle, and somebody got married at last." Joel said this, disgustedly dropping the bright-covered, tastily-lettered volume he held in his hand. It was my book, taken that day from our new Sunday-school library, selected by a competent committee and lately arrived. What with getting dinner and doing the dishes and putting away our Sunday clothes and hunting up the text, I hadn't had time so much as to look at it. But I was anticipating a real "feast of reason and flow of soul" for the evening, when I could settle down to reading undisturbed and undistracted. The good man's sharp criticism rather dampened my enthusiasm, though I haven't lived these forty odd years with Joel not to understand somewhat his way of thinking and mode of speech. Besides, the dear old fellow having been brought up on such strong meat as the "Pilgrim's Progress," "Saint's Rest" and "Fox's Book of Martyrs," couldn't naturally be expected to take with very keen relish to the sugared and spiced compounds craved by the intellectual and moral appetite of the moderns. So, mentally, I "made allowances," as I have found out it is often needful to do, and said, speaking rather cheerfully and gladly in reference to the "got married" part of his remarks, "Well, you and I did that once, you know." Joel was taken altogether by surprise; my pleasant word displaced his ill humor as effectually as a soft answer turns away wrath. Before he meant it the lines of his rugged old countenance relaxed into one of those slow rare smiles that, upon his lips, is like a touch of sunshine in a winter landscape. Without at all intending it, he heartily exclaimed, "Yes, thank the Lord, Keziah;" but couldn't refrain from adding a trifle impatiently, "and a sight more sensibly than they do it in the books, too, I hope." With the preface of this foolish little episode that kept repeating itself to my silly, old woman's heart in rhythmic numbers and tender cadences, I drew up the Boston rocker and half-sympathetically, notwithstanding what had been said, turned to a perusal of the fortunes of Mr. Sydney Fitz-Simmons and Miss Arabelle St. Clair. Faithfully I plodded through page after page of prosy moralizing, insipid narrative, and senseless dialogue. When, finally, after several evenings of like doubtful pleasure, I had counted the whole three hundred and ninety-five pages and the book had closed over, I tried to think out and gather up the lesson of the story. Hard task to which I set my feeble powers! Perhaps, though, it was one of those artistic works without a purpose, itself its best excuse, of which the cultured talk in these latter days, and so quite beyond the appreciation of a plain, old-fashioned body like myself. Perhaps. During a religious revival, remarkable for its anxious-seat experiences and higher-life attainments, it seemed that the saintly young Arabelle succeeded in discipling the worldly and wicked Sydney. Small gain to the good cause he must have been, since we are told that the moment when he "gave up all" (to quote from the book) was "while he stood at the door of the St. Clair mansion, in the solemn moonlit stillness, holding Arabelle's little hand in his;" and that the inspiring motive of this act was "the sudden, awful fear that came over him of an eternal separation from the spotless soul that looked out of Arabelle St. Clair's beseeching eyes." Then we are told what wondrous joy thrilled the zealous young evangelist when she subsequently beheld "lying amidst the clustering curls and upon the marble brow of Sydney Fitz-Simmons, as he knelt lowlily at the altar-side, those crystal drops that were the outward sign of an inner newness." This for the grounding in faith of the youth of a church which enjoins, "Buried with him by baptism into death; that like as Christ was raised up from the dead, even so we, also, should walk in newness of life"! "Oh, but our children will read something; it's better than dime novels and sensational story papers," Mrs. Huntly easily said in reply to a disparaging word of mine. Mrs. Huntly had been one of the committee of selection for the new library. Such a jumble of mawkish sentimentality, vulgar cant, unsound doctrine and distorted views of life "better"—than anything! It was Robert Collyer, I believe, who said there was nothing so near a splendid angel as a splendid devil; and I had almost averred that there might be a genuine badness which could put to the blush this perverted teaching sent forth in the guise of religious effort. At all events, I should no sooner expect boys and girls to develop a moral manhood and womanhood that was pure and gracious and elevated and noble and sweet from this kind of stimulus than I should look to see a skunk-cabbage flowering into roses. To say nothing of the dwarfing of the mental powers which must as inevitably follow such an intellectual pabulum, as a stunted physique would come of an un-nutritious diet. Of course they "got married at last"—this Sydney and Arabelle—just as Joel discovered. It was doubtless foreordained in the author's first thought of them that they should this, and it was certainly throughout the unfolding of the tale Arabelle's one aim and purpose. Now of that most blest estate surely no woman has reason to say better things than Keziah Speedwell, speaking out of her own happy experience; yes, very happy, spite of Joel's persistent melancholy and trouble-looking-for. Yet even she might hint to the young maidens of Clayton Parish that besides matrimony life contains some supplementary blessings well worth attaining unto. Only to hear them cry out in chorus, "Oh, Aunt Kezzy is old-fogyish and behind the times;" therefore she wisely refrains. All in all my first acquaintance with the new library was not prepossessing; but a part is not the whole, I reasoned, and I will not be too quick to condemn. Next week my selection proved to be of a different nature. "The Last Days of Mary Jane Potter," its title read, and its text recounted the exercises and ecstasies of a damsel of tender years dying by inches of some extraordinary malady unknown to medical science. Mother Potter kept the wolf from the door by a continual play of a washboard, while the afflicted Mary Jane, during her oft-recurring paroxysms of suffering, saw visions appalling, which, in intervals of ease, with such strength as she could muster, were narrated and explained. In the final chapter Mary Jane went off triumphantly, and the old lady, comforting herself that the poor girl was "better off," put away her tubs and made ready for the funeral. Another book told pathetically of the life of a little lad so gentle and patient, so good and lovable, that unawares he stole one's heart. But, with all these beautiful traits of character, there was something at fault in his tibial appendages, and the sweet child never walked. In due course of time he went to be an angel; "and with the angels stand," I could but fervently hope in view of his former condition. "Don't want to be a good boy; won't be a good boy; good boys has lame legs and dies," little Freddie Maynard stubbornly declared, after hearing the story of poor Jo. Then again, I got hold of a most curious work relating how a feminine fanatic lost her husband through neglect of caring for him in a fever; how she lost her money through a haphazard investment; how she caught the consumption through over-much going to evening meetings; and finally how she went whining about, trying to submit to the dispensations of Providence—O, greatly abused Providence so perpetually made the scapegoat of human blundering and sin! She didn't die; but she was going to, for the last glimpse of her, leaves her all ready, shouting in such a fervor of self-abnegation as neither nature nor grace ever put into the soul of a flesh-and-blood woman, "The dearest idol I have known;
Whate'er that idol be,
Help me to tear it from thy throne,
And worship only thee." And there I rested from my research into the new library. It wasn't worth the cost of the candle-light to read it by, nor the strain on my dim old eyes. And here I want to make my moan over that constantly rising tide of wishy-washy, goody-goody literature which threatens to engulf the rising generation in its intellect-stultifying, heart-perverting waters. I am so sick of the vauntings of a namby-pamby passion; so tired of death-bed scenes and limb-paralyzed children; so disgusted with cant and hypocrisy. True love, whether human or divine, uplifts, ennobles, glorifies; a merry heart doeth good like a medicine; a sound body becomes a "fit temple for the indwelling of the Holy Spirit;" length of days is Heaven's own gracious gift; and God never will hold himself responsible for our troubles that he gave us sense enough to keep out of. And here, too, I want to make an appeal to those good and wise men and women who hold Sunday-school Institutes and labor for the perfection of the scheme of righteous instruction-giving. I want to ask them to devise, out of their goodness and wisdom, some method for insuring to the dear boys and girls of our Sunday-schools, reading matter of a better type—reading fit for the bright minds and noble instincts and precious souls that are their heritage.—A. E. C., in Examiner and Chronicle.