p. 521 | UNWHOLESOME READING

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jun 26, 1893

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 19, No. 33.

UNWHOLESOME READING.

OUR traveler noted the extreme youth of many of the crowd at the fiction table in the public library. And in response to her questions, the attendant said: "These are mostly schoolchildren. In the evening we have the shop girls, even the cash boys and girls, not older than these younger ones, in just such a crowd."

"And do many of these come often, so that you get to know them?"

"Oh, yes! That girl you see at the desk now," a slender child, not above thirteen, by her looks, "takes out two books a week regularly. That boy you see gets two every Wednesday, and two more every Saturday; and he wants the most exciting stories we can select for him; won't take anything better if we suggest it to him. And the girl just back of him is a high-school scholar, and takes out from two to four a week. We know almost all of this crowd."

"And, so far as you know, they select for themselves, are allowed to choose from this public table without home restriction as to quantity or quality?" asked the inquirer.

"Yes; the most of these come to this department on Saturday. At the departments of travel, biography, history, science, art, and standard fiction, many young boys and girls come with slips of paper on which are written the titles of books they have been advised to consult, or take home to read, by their parents or teachers. We try to advise those who pick for themselves—the trustees of the library wish us to do so—but we can't make them take what they don't want, and we don't have much time to talk with any of those who come in such a crowd as this."

There are two inflexible rules which every parent should obey, and make the child obey, in respect to all reading outside of that required and suggested by a competent and trusted teacher in connection with school work. The first rule is, Get the best and widest knowledge possible to you in respect to mentally and morally desirable books and papers for your children to read. The second rule is, Allow no child to read anything which you have not selected yourself understandingly.

What would be thought of a parent who turned a baby loose upon a table of indigestible and poisonous foods and drinks prepared for feasting grown-up and depraved appetites, and let it eat and drink at will? Yet, inasmuch as the mind and conscience are more precious and costly than the body, to permit a child to range, unattended and unrestrained, through the field of literature, is far more murderous and criminal.

There can be hardly one mother in all America so isolated from educated people, or so poor in literary opportunities, that it is impossible for her to get something good, wholesome, and attractive for her children to read. Cheap editions of standard books, and low-priced magazines, free libraries, and friendly advisers among ministers and teachers and helpful people, abound. It is failure to appreciate at its full power the evil that is in bad or poor literature, rather than inability to find out and procure good literature, which is the real trouble. It is the failure of ordinary parents to appreciate the duty to control and protect the growing mind, as of the same binding importance as the protection and care of the little body, which is the real trouble in this matter. It is, deeper than all, a false taste and vitiated moral judgment in the parents themselves that leave the children a prey to bad and silly books and papers. Let the parents "begin at Jerusalem." Let them cultivate in themselves a refined taste, a discriminating mental choice, and a real elevation of moral feeling respecting literature, and then they can and will surround their children with reading matter which will be altogether helpful.

Another point which parents must think of seriously in studying the effects of literature upon vicious tendencies, is the influence of the daily press. The newspaper is almost the sole literature of millions of families, of more people by far than read books or magazines. The "story papers" are, with a few honorable exceptions, weakening to the mind, and enervating or positively hurtful to the moral sense. They give low ideas of life, false pictures of society, and strained or overstimulating play of incident; but numerous and widely circulated as these story papers are, the daily newspaper is doubtless read by a hundred where these are read by one.

There are clean journals, giving news and not vulgar gossip, giving a full record of the time, of the evil as well as the good, as a true newspaper must do, but showing, by the space given respectively to each, that they hold great movements in the conduct of public affairs to be of more importance than small details of personal vice and crime. But of how many newspapers is this true? In how many is the eye first attracted by showy headings relating to the evil doings of insignificant people, or vulgar details of personal gossip! In how many is to be found a disgusting particularity in all reports of scandals and obscenities! In how many is the space not devoted to advertisements given much more largely to the vicious than to the good side of life!

Let mothers and fathers see to it that the daily press, the cheap story paper, the widely-circulated book, and all the reading matter which enters the home, or is suffered to influence the child, is pure in tone and elevating to mind and to heart.—Selected.