The Harm of Novel Reading
By Editor
MISS FRANCES E. WILLARD says she recalls with gratitude the fact that in girlhood she was "not allowed to read novels." Upon which the Independent justly remarks: "We fear that forty years hence the same opinion will get support on the other side, in the lamentations of women who read what they pleased as girls, and were transformed into dreamers before they were sixteen years old." We fear that it will be forty years, before these lamentations begin to support this sound opinion. Girls, or boys either, who are made dreamers before they are sixteen, or at any other time, are not fit for this world nor for this life. This world is a very matter-of-fact place, and is no place for dreamers. "Life is real, life is earnest," and is not made up of such unsubstantial things as dreams. But the only effect of novels and the multitude of "story papers" is to make dreamers of all who read them, and to totally unfit them for any real good in life. Parents, put all such reading in the fire. The children will, of course, think it a hardship at the time, but such action of yours will bear fruit in after years, not only in the gratitude, but in the real moral worth of your sons and daughters.