NOVEL READING | AdventAI

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 30, 1868

NOVEL READING.

Novel readers, don't skip this paragraph; it is for you. In a volume by T. S. Arthur, entitled, “Advice to Young Ladies,” we find the following excellent remarks upon this crying evil of the age:

“Few of the popular novels of the day are fit to go into the hands of a young and imaginative girl. Apart from the false views of life which they present, and the false philosophy which they too often inculcate, they lift an inexperienced reader entirely above the real, from whence she has too little inclination to come down; and whenever she does come down, she is unhappy because she finds none of the ideal perfections around her, with which her imagination has become filled, but is forever coming into rude contact with something that shocks her over-refined sensibilities. Her own condition in life she will be in great danger of contrasting with that of some favorite heroine of romance. If she do this, she will be almost sure to make herself miserable. A young lady who indulges in novel-reading, never becomes a woman of true intelligence. She may be able to converse fluently, and to make herself at times, a very agreeable companion, even to those who are greatly her superiors; but she has no strength of intellect, nor has she right views of life.”

This language is not the excited and blind denunciation of passion. It is cool, calm, rational. It points out the evil, and tells why it is an evil. And it must commend itself to the sober judgment even of those addicted to this evil habit, if their minds have not become so perverted by it as to render them incapable of appreciating sound reason. We call particular attention to the closing sentence. It is equally applicable to both sexes. To make fiction their food destroys their strength of intellect, and gives them wrong views of life. Are you willing to be thus stultified and perverted? If you are, go on in this senseless and pernicious course; if you are not, banish the poisonous trash from your company and your houses. Why will you destroy yourselves? Why burlesque this life by misusing its fairest opportunities, while at the same time you are cutting off your prospect for the eternal glories of that which is to come?