WHAT THE CHILDREN READ.
By Mary Wager-Fisher
ONE cannot but wonder what will be the outcome in the quality of the next generation of men and women, morally and intellectually, who are to-day the boys and girls for whose entertainment an altogether unprecedented amount and variety of literature is prepared, and by them read. Even in the realm of the sciences, the tendency of the age is to construct, if possible, a royal road to learning. With fascinating text, and pictures equally so, that leave little room for the action of the imagination, the youth of to-day are entertained and instructed in a manner hitherto unrealized. In the history of nearly all men and women whose superiority has left its impress on the race, and the details of whose lives are familiar to us, we find that the books they read were few, and that these were read and re-read until thoroughly absorbed in the mind. And the farther back we go—even to those glorious writers of antiquity whose writings for ages have been the delight and solace of the best intellects—we return to minds that were innocent of the daily newspaper, the monthly magazine, or "popular literature." The minds that were writing for all time were formed on the basis of thought, of observation, and the social interchange of ideas. That the abundant current literature designed for the young is, for the most part, innocent, is undoubtedly true; but mere innocence and harmlessness, when filling the mind to the exclusion of what could give it vigor and sturdiness, become vicious. And in looking over the land to-day, and around the reading-table of every intelligent American family, what do we find the children, for the most part, reading? Stories, stories, stories! How many boys of sixteen have read Sir Francis Bacon until they are thoroughly "Baconized," as I heard the author of "A Fool's Errand" say he was at that age—not in a boasting spirit, but incidentally, in speaking of his boyhood and of his father's library. And how many girls of thirteen are reading the poets of antiquity, as was Mrs. Browning at that age? Now, what men and women read after twenty-one years is a matter of small consequence in comparison with what boys and girls read prior to that age. If, in the matter of obedience, it is conceded that one cannot begin too early with a child, the same may as truthfully be said of his reading. Not only is it true that the writers, artists, inventors, discoverers, and doers of things that have helped and elevated the human race, have been students of fact, readers of those books that developed the mind, and obliged them to think, but it is equally true that happiness and safety lie in the same direction. How honored has our country been by men and women whose childhood's reading was bounded by the Bible, by Homer, "The Pilgrim's Progress," and "Paradise Lost"! But what can we safely expect from a generation of minds through which unceasingly filters a stream of the modern popular current literature? The vigor of the mind is washed away by this continuous flow of "entertaining" reading, which not only saps the life of creative imagination, but devours in its immeasurable maw the golden hours of youth—those priceless hours in which lie all the making, all the prosperity, and all the usefulness of the future man and woman. Most parents are desirous of giving their children an education; but, in their ignorance or their thoughtlessness, fail at the very outset in not having their reading properly directed. No subsequent advantages can atone for these misdirected and lost opportunities of youth,77and the wail of many a man and woman is, "Oh, that I had been led to read books in my youth—my golden youth, that was wasted on trash!" As aids and abettors in this vicious business the average Sunday-school library stands pre-eminent. It begins with the infant class, and retains its hold upon it until childhood is gone and maturity well-nigh reached. The complaint of a Philadelphia father that the four Sunday-school novels of 300 pages each that his four daughters bring home weekly from the Sunday-school had become the bane of his household, is by no means a solitary instance. Twelve hundred pages of "moral," nay, silly, garrulity imbibed each week by growing girls! Think of it, all you in whose homes and round whose hearthstones similar thieves of time, of mental vigor and strength, of high purpose, of manly endeavor, of future usefulness, and, above all, of sturdy, abiding character, hover in the shape of popular literature for young folks in its thousand forms! As the foe of intellectual culture and development there is no other so insidious and so powerful. And who is to blame?—Mary Wager-Fisher.