Popular Amusements

oks there is no en

y something new is certainly not wrong if the portraiture be true, and there be a good reason for the portrayal. There is a place, also, for fancy and imagination in the legitimate operations of the mind; nor does the fact that the interest centers in love necessarily condemn it. True love, such as God designed to exist among the families of

ts way into the hands of our people, as they journey by land or water, is almost invariably fictitious. Our weekly periodicals, secular and religious, often have their serial story. Our Sunday school libraries have been overwhelmed by the flood of weak and washy literature till scarce a vestige of sober history or real biogr

young to find their way through this labyrinth of good and evil, the good little and the evil infinite. The safest rule, in whose application the fewest mistakes will be made, is that of TOTAL ABSTINENCE. To declare that all the wild fruit of a certain forest is poisonous, and to prophecy the death o

required to give more discriminating advice, there are four maxims whic

ime for reading, spend none

ss in the circles to which you belong and your position in the community are intimately connected with the degree in which you improve your mind. You have much to do. You have no time to waste on counterfeit coin while golden treasures of knowledge woo you on every side. Read your Bibles. Read history, the records of the past, and the accounts of current events. Read the biographies of good

ad only the best

upon your good name would be if you were seen walking arm in arm with those whose very presence is dishonor. There are books so vile that the mere possession of them is fatal to reputation. You will find people whose minds are so empty, and whose talk is so frivolous, that the time spent in their society is lost. There are many books of the same sort. You will meet still other people with whom you can not spend an hour without fe

read these. I do not name them, because I am not willing to be held responsible for all the time which might possibly be spent over them on the plea that they

f fiction form but a very s

trong bone and muscle out of rainbows and moonbeams. You will grow in intelligence, sense, virtue, practical power for good only by means of solid food. Portraitures of "something new, falling within the domain of fancy, with their interest centering in love," may please for the moment, but if you get nothing better you

ns to render substantial reading distasteful, and the common dut

a summoning of all concentrated power of will? Then summon the power and form the high resolve without a moment's delay, for life and death tremble in the balance. Are virtue and honor so far undermined that the victim is ready to take refuge in hypocrisy and lies, denying in public and indulging in secret? Alas! it is to be feared that the work of ruin is already done. At all events, only one hope remains. There must be a quick and thorough reform, a sudden sundering of the chains which bind to the "body of death." In the matter of novels, are you uncertain whether the point of peril has been reached in your own case? Try yourself. Lay aside

ich marks the confirmed novel-reader. Common novel-reading is a fearful evil, and a

tes preci

hn Wesley, or George Washington would sound connected with the authorship of a fanciful story whose "interest centers in love!" The names which illumine the historic page with the purest light are those which it would amaze us to find connected with the authorship of ordinary fiction. It is worth while to pause a

best that can be said of the best of them is, that they confer pleasure without inflicting injury. But whatever may be the quality, you may be sure that excess in quantity is injurious. The vast majority of novel readers are young, and for them to squander the precious hours is suicidal. Youth, wasted, ushers in a feeb

ight reading i

h for the purpose. But habitual novel-readers hurry on to see "how it all comes out," seldom pausing to consider the force of a figure, or the beauty of an expression. Ingenious thought, keen discrimination in depicting character, accurate descriptions of natural scenery, nice points of style, are lost in the rush of words. There is a headlong race of event after event, shadows and light, storm and calm, and at last an end, a rapid panorama, little of which is

reading tends to

differently. What chance is there for the student who indeed holds Blackstone or Wood before his dreamy eyes, but whose thoughts are upon the unfinished romance in his desk? How can the daughter at home find happiness in aiding to bear the bur

tle romances of their own, in which they themselves are the beautiful ladies and the gallant gentlemen who achieve impossibilities, suffer unutterable woe for a season, and at last anchor in a boundless ocean of connubial bliss. Nor does it require much previous mental cultivation to enable one to indulge in these visionary jo

s in dream-land. Ella, sitting among her native cinders, is a very prosaic individual, addicted to exceedingly prosaic employments, and fulfilling a destiny far removed from sublimated romance. But touched by the wand of the

ine, and with all her matrimonial anglings, perhaps has never a nibble. In her other capacity she is the Countess of Moonshine, who dwells in a Castle of Spain, wears a coronet of diamonds, and to whom ardent lords and smitten princes make love in loftiest eloquence; and she is blest. But, as Napoleon once observed, there is only a step between the sublime and the ridiculous. At a

terate habit of indulging in sentimental reverie, to engage heartily in the performance of commonplace duties? The inevitable result of excessive nov

ading creates an over

entice, the clerk, the student, the farmer's boy, the plain John or Peter of his real self. He is merged in the hero of the story, handsome in person, brilliant in mind, endowed with every excellence, and bearing a name of at least three syllables. He becomes the ardent suitor of the beautifu

editating matrimony when he has scarcely got beyond the limits of marbles and green apples. He looks around at the little girls to see which of them is the princess in disguise; and soon imagines that he is desperately in love with some little damse

he model lover who lays his hand upon his heart, lifts his tearful face toward heaven, and says pretty things. She feels disdain for the plain young men of her acquaintance, and p

ness and honor in the world depend. There is an overgrowth of the passions, an exaltation of marriage out of all due proportion to other sources of rational happiness, an overestimate of beauty, wealth, and the other accidentals of human life; and a corresponding underestimate of the value of piety, industry, and the sober virtues which are "in the sight of God of great p

morbid love of excitement somewhat akin

ct. He resorts to the drug that he may feel rich, powerful, exalted, and happy, while, in reality, he is "wretched, and miserable, and p

n to the verge of death, to gain, from time to time, a feeble return of the momentary joys which once a very little of his chosen stimulus had power to impart. The experience of the confirmed novel-reader is similar. The simple tales of innocent love

lmost invariably pictures of somebody shooting or stabbing somebody. The last embellishment which I have noticed, however, is a cut of somebody strangling the other somebody with his naked hands. This is doubtless still more delightfully horrible to the admirers of this style of writing, and calculated to thrill them with a new sensation. When the mind has become so vitiated that it turns away not only from all so

ls tends to lessen the reader's

a book in which his own vice is white-washed into a sort of semi-respectability, and made merely an amiable weakness, while some Church member of sounding professions, or perhaps a Christian minister, turns out to be the villain of the plot. Thus in one character we see a villain bearing the Christian name, and in another a hidden vice united with so many shining qualities that the moral deformity is hidden by the splendors that are thrown around it. Thus the reader is tr

asy it is to commit suicide, when rage and disappointment supply the temptation. In communities where every man goes armed, and every eye is familiar with scenes of blood, small provocations lead to murder. It is not irrational to assume that one reason why play-actors, as a class,

contact with the things which they condemn and abhor. I believe that the fearful multiplication of tragic crimes in our own day is due, in no small degree, to two causes-one the too general circulation of a corrupt literature, which familiarizes the reader with all that is detestable and infamous in character and conduct, the other the common use of drugged liquors, which

ch comes to hand while I am writing, corrob

, and no bad ones, I should have read the good books with the same zest that I did the bad. Persuade all persons over whom you have any influence not to read novels.' The Ordinary of Newgate Prison, in his report to the Lord Mayor, represents what a fruitful source of crime the Jack Sheppard and Paul Clifford style of novels has bee

itious reading is totally at

secret prayer is hurried over, or wholly neglected, because of a burning desire to know what comes next in the story; when meditation on divine things is forgotten in endless day-dreams of love and worldly splendor; or, worse still, when real l

r the guidance of all, young and old, learned and unlearned: Total ABSTINENCE FROM NOVEL-READING HENCEFORTH AND FOREVER. Surely, there is abundant cause for the