CHAPTER XVIII. Be Chary of Bad Books

BE CHARY OF BAD BOOKS

Books are wonderful things. They are companions and teachers. For their authors they cost much thought, time and expense; for the reader they are cheap and helpful. They carry the mind fast and safe the world over. “In the twinkling of an eye one can be exploring with Livingstone in Africa, or campaigning with Napoleon or Grant. One can meditate with Socrates, conspire with Cataline, steal the Stratford deer with Will Shakespeare, swim the Hellespont with Byron, weigh the earth with Newton, and climb the heavens with Herschel.”

There being such an abundance of literary works, the question often arises, “What should a boy read? Would it be wise to read everything that comes into his hands?” By no means. To eat all kinds of food, suitable or otherwise, would be sure to create disease. There are the “scavengers” among animals, but there should not be such among readers. To read everything would be most injurious. Good judgment should be exercised in selecting the quality of books read and no less in the quantity perused. There are books, which, if read, would poison thought, corrupt morals and perchance blast the prospects of the future. On the other hand, there are books which stimulate the mind, strengthen the morals, comfort the heart and prepare the life for usefulness and success.

GOOD BOOKS.

Good books are a blessing to everyone. The principles they inculcate, the lessons they exhibit, the ideals of life and character they portray, stamp themselves indelibly upon the mind and habits of the reader. “Give a man a taste for good books and the means of gratifying it,” said Sir John Herschel, “and you can hardly fail of making him a happy man. You place him in contact with the best society in every period of history, with the wisest, the wittiest, the tenderest, the bravest and the purest characters who have adorned humanity. You make him a denizen of all nations, a contemporary of all ages.” “A good book,” said Milton, “is the precious life-blood of a master spirit embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.” “In the best books,” said Dr. Channing, “great men talk to us, with us, and give us their most precious thoughts. Books are the voices of the distant and the dead. Books are the true leaders, they give to all who will faithfully use them, the society and the presence of the best and the greatest of our race. No matter how poor I am, no matter though the prosperity of my own time will not enter my obscure dwelling, if learned men and poets will enter and take up their abode under my roof, if Milton will cross my threshold to sing to me of Paradise, and Shakespeare open to me the world of imagination and the workings of the human heart, and Franklin enrich me with his practical wisdom, I shall not pine for want of intellectual companionship, and I may become a cultivated man, though excluded from what is called the best society in the place where I live.”

It was through reading Cotton Mather’s “Essays to Do Good” that Benjamin Franklin when a boy was influenced to be good and do good. Said he, “If I have been a useful citizen the public owes all the advantage of it to this little book.” William Carey was induced to become a missionary to India by reading “Cook’s Voyage Around the World.” Adoniram Judson became a missionary to the East Indies by reading Buchanan’s “Star in the East.” Richard Baxter became a Christian and minister by reading a book called “The Bruised Reed,” given him by a man who was staying at his father’s home. Baxter wrote “A Call to the Unconverted,” which influenced the life of Philip Doddridge. Doddridge wrote, “The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul,” which was the means of the conversion of Wilberforce. Wilberforce in return secured the abolition of slavery in the West Indies, and wrote “A Practical View of Christianity,” which did much to commend spiritual religion to the higher classes of his countrymen, and which led not only Dr. Chalmers into the truth, but Leigh Richmond to Christ. Richmond wrote “The Dairyman’s Daughter,” which has been published in a hundred languages and of which over five million copies have been sold. All this resulted from “The Bruised Reed,” written by an unknown Puritan minister named Sibbs.

Foreign readers of Lincoln’s Gettysburg speech and his second inaugural address, asked, “Whence got this man his style, seeing he knows nothing of literature?” In his boyhood Lincoln had access to four books, the Bible, “Pilgrim’s Progress,” Burns’ Poems, and Weems’ “Life of Washington.” He so memorized many of the chapters of the Bible that subsequently he seldom made a speech at the bar or on the “stump” in which he did not quote from it. The secret of his literary beauty and ability was his knowledge of the English Bible and Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress,” two books which represent the rhythm, the idiom, the majesty, and the power of the English language.

“All Sorts and Conditions of Men,” written by Sir Walter Besant, was the means of the erection of a “People’s Palace” in East London. The subtitle of the book was “An Impossible Story.” It presents the hard life of the people of the crowded East End of London, and tells, in the form of a novel, of the ideals and ambitions of a young mechanic who has had a better education than his fellows, and used it for their advantage. Through his efforts, as related in the book, a great central building, a “People’s Palace,” is erected in the East End, where the social life of the people can express itself; where they can study and read, see fine paintings, hear good music, have their games and athletic sports, and, in general, meet life on a higher plane than is possible in their own unattractive homes. To-day that “Palace” stands as an evidence of the dreamer’s dream in which and through which, the public gain knowledge and recreation. Surely the influence of one good book is marvellous.

BAD BOOKS.

Bad books are numerous. They force themselves upon us everywhere, tempting by their cheapness, alluring by their colored illustrations, and injuring by their teaching. Possibly, few agencies are working more mental and moral havoc among boys than corrupt books. Once allow the mind to be absorbed by their evil influence and the feelings and passions are driven to and fro by the whirlwind of a purposeless life.

On one occasion a gentleman in India went into his library and took down a book. As he did so, he felt a slight pain in one of his fingers. He thought a pin had been stuck by some careless person in the cover of his book. But soon the finger began to swell, then his arm and then his whole body, and in a few days he died. On investigation it was found that a small serpent had hidden itself among the books. If there is one thing more than another that will poison the mind with the venom of evil, it is impure literature, against which every boy should set his heart like flint, whether it comes in the form of a daily newspaper, a pictorial periodical or a book. It is as deadly as a serpent.

Fichte, the noted German philosopher, was once reading a “blood-and-thunder” story, when, in the midst of it, he said: “Now this will never do. I get too excited over it. I can’t study so well after, so here goes,” and he flung the book into the river. That was a wise act. Talmage states that the assassin of Sir William Russell declared he got the inspiration of his crime by reading what was then a new and popular novel, “Jack Sheppard.” Alexis Piron, the French poet and satirist, sought for many years to obtain a seat among the Forty Immortals in the French Academy. He was recognized among the poets of his day, and was confident of his ultimate admission, when a vile ode, written when he was a boy, was brought to light, and he knew that the door of the Academy was forever closed in his face. “Twenty-five years ago,” said Rev. John James, “a lad loaned me an infamous book. He would loan it only for fifteen minutes and then I had to give it back, but that book has haunted me like a spectre ever since. I have in agony of soul, on my knees before God, prayed that He would obliterate the memory of it, but I shall carry the damage of it until the day of my death.” “I remember well when I was not more than twelve years of age,” said Dr. Leonard, “that I was shown a book—a vile book—by a German shoemaker. He came through the region of country where I lived, and the pictures that were in that book are now in my mind to-night as clearly as when I first looked upon them. Other pictures of beauty have faded, but somehow those have remained; I have said I will turn that picture away from my memory and won’t think of it again; yet, as often as I think of that German shoemaker, that vile book stands out again before my mind.”

Not long ago, a young man in Indiana committed suicide. He ascribed his downfall to the influence of “the vilest kind of novels. If good books had been furnished me,” he said, “and no bad ones, I should have read the good books with as great zest as I did the bad ones. Persuade all persons over whom you have an influence not to read novels.” Such was his parting message to his brother. “This is not self-murder. If thine eye offend thee pluck it out. If thy life offend thee, give it back to Him who gave it to thee. I ask that this cross be put on my breast in my grave. Bury me in this holy robe.” Such was the letter of Master Grosse, the nineteen-year-old son of an English clergyman, who committed suicide after reading Marie Corelli’s “Mighty Atom.” This was the second death by self-destruction caused by reading the book. In like manner not a few have destroyed themselves through the false teaching of infidel books. O the wretchedness, the misery, the sorrows that the reading of bad books brings. Spurn them, for they are deadly things.

WHAT TO READ.

“What shall I read?” may be a question asked in this connection. Emerson said: “Never read a book that is not a year old. Never read any but famed books. Read only what you like, or, in Shakespeare’s famous phrase:

‘No profit goes where is no pleasure ta’en; In brief, sir, study what you most affect.’”

The value of a book consists not in what it will do for one’s amusement, but for one’s edification. Boys are generally more easily persuaded to read fictitious books because there is something captivating about them. Some had better not be read, while others which are amusing may be helpful. Abbot’s Histories, Scribner’s “Library of Wonder,” and “Library of Travel,” “Aesop’s Fables,” “Robinson Crusoe,” “Peasant and Prince,” “The Tale of Two Brothers,” “Paul and Virginia,” “The Vicar of Wakefield,” Scott’s “Tales of a Grandfather,” the Indian tales of Fenimore Cooper, the fascinating character stories of Dickens, and many others, are all suitable to read. They will stimulate the fancy, enlarge the sympathies and improve the taste.

There are biographies of great and noble men. They will arouse the spirit, instruct the mind and influence the life. “The good life,” says George Herbert, “is never out of season.” Every boy should read such lives as Washington, Lincoln, Grant, and the lives of great statesmen, lawyers, poets and ministers.

Nothing will give a clearer insight of the past with its events and characters, manners and law, trades and industries, modes of government and conditions of people than history. A few good histories like Thalheimer’s “Manual of Ancient History,” Macaulay’s “History of the World,” Gibbon’s magnificent drama of the “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” and Ridpath’s “History of the United States,” bring all the world with its pleasures and sufferings and everything inspired with living reality before us.

Then there is poetry. The world’s highest wisdom, its profoundest truths and its best philosophy appear in poetic language. Leigh Hunt said, “It is the breath of beauty, flowing around the spiritual world, as the winds that wake up the flowers do about the material.” Plato asserts that “poetry comes nearer the vital truth than history.” Scarcely do we find a volume of impure stanzas. “Only that is poetry which cleanses and mans me,” wrote Emerson. Milton is said to have regarded himself as inspired in the conception and production of “Paradise Lost” and “Paradise Regained.” The poet Cowper was a man with consecrated heart. His epitaph reads: “His virtues formed the magic of his song.” Wordsworth’s poems are medicine. Bryant interprets nature in her loftiest thoughts and feelings. Longfellow speaks for the holiest affections. Whittier sounds the bugle charges against every wrong, waking the memory of happy olden days with their attendant, familiar faces. Holmes bubbles over with humor and laughter. All these and many more become our best friends and teachers. There is also the philosophical, which every boy should grapple—Locke’s “Human Understanding,” Porter’s “Intellectual Science,” and Haven’s “Ancient and Modern Philosophy.” Grapple with scientific books, such as Hugh Miller’s Geology, Johnson’s “Chemistry of Common Life.” In fact, in the language of Tulloch, “Whether you read history or poetry, science or theology, or even fiction of a worthy kind, it will prove a mental discipline and bring increase of wisdom.”

HOW SHALL I READ?

“Read not,” says Bacon, “to contradict and confront, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider.” Carlyle expressed the same thought when he said, “Pursue your studies in the way your conscience calls honest. More and more endeavor to do that.” Read with care, not with a half-mechanical glancing over the pages as we would look over a map or listen to the instructor while the mind is playing hide-and-seek with floating daydreams. Read with regularity. Have a definite time if possible, when no one will be likely to obtrude. Select some line of knowledge both interesting and useful, and read with the intention of acquiring a thorough understanding of it. When finishing a chapter, take a mental review and if not able to give an outline of it, read it over again. By so doing, one cultivates a retentive memory. Should anything of importance present itself, underline it. Sir William Hamilton underscored. Cardinal Newman wrote in the margin of his books a statement of his own views upon the paragraph he read. Gladstone always read with pencil in hand, marking on the margin those passages he wished to remember, questioning those about which he was in doubt, and putting a cross opposite those he disputed. In reading, use a dictionary to aid in pronouncing and defining large or unknown words. If possible, read aloud. It aids enunciation and leads to a mastery of inflection. Above all, make it your business, my boy, to extract the honey from what you read. Read for mental sustenance. Read so as to know how to live, speak and act, or read not at all.

An old pilot was once asked if he knew where all the rocks were along the line of travel. There is a world of wisdom in his answer: “I do not need to know where all the rocks are; it is enough for me to know where the rocks are not, and keep in the free channel.” By reading good books one avoids those dangers to morals which lurk in so much of the literature of the day. By it, he becomes wiser, happier, nobler, esteeming the words and thoughts of those whose presence may never more be appreciated by mortal man. Though dead, they yet speak.