The Dime Novel Nuisance.
By Editor
A NEW YORK correspondent of an exchange makes the following statement concerning the "Dime Novel" nuisance. It is alarming. We publish it to call the attention of parents and guardians to the necessity of scrupulous care and diligence as to books read by children under their care. It is impossible to estimate the injury done to heart, mind, and conscience, by the sort of intellectual food here described. It unfits the mind for all serious and persistent study, perverts the taste, feeds an unholy pruriency, inflames the passions, enervates the moral sentiments, and wrecks all manliness. Be on your guard:— "I have been told by a prominent job printer that half his presses are running on this kind of work. While literature, generally, is dull, this style maintains its full rate of sale. It is evident that such reading must weaken and degrade the mind prodigiously, and indeed it is found that lovers of dime novels can read little else. By the same rule that strong drink evidently weakens the body, tales so exciting weaken the intellect. A gentleman of fine literary taste remarked that the youthful mind of the country is threatened with idiocy. 'Had I,' said he, 'been fed on such trash while young, I should have been imbecile.' The effect of early reading for good or evil is beyond estimate. I know a man who, while a boy, was in a place where almost the only reading book he could get—next to the Bible—was Addison's Spectator. He read this many times and became imbued with its style and sentiments, which gave him an abiding culture and elevation. Suppose instead of this he had read 'Lantern-face Bob,' 'Small-Pox Dave,' 'Fighting Nat,' 'Clumsy Foot,' or 'Long-legged Joe.' These names I have taken from the publisher's list, and they challenge admiration. The latter is making money, but it is at the expense of the mental vigor of the public. The sale of these tales never was greater than at present, and recently a flaming handbill has been sent to every postmaster, to attract attention."