Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 November 1874 — A Little Talk to the Boys and Girls. [ARTICLE]

A Little Talk to the Boys and Girls.

It is very hard for boys and girls between ten and twenty to believe what older people tell them concerning the selection of reading matter. If a book is interesting, exciting, thrilling, the young folks want to read it. They like to feel tlieir hair stand on end at the hairbreadth escapes of the hero, and their nerves tingle to the ends of their fingers at his exploits, and their faces burn with passionate sympathy in his tribulations—and what harm is there in it? Let us see what harm there may be. You know very well that a, child fed on candy and cake and. sweetmeats soon loses all healthy appetLe for nutritious food, his teeth grow black and crumble away, bis stomach becomes deranged, his breath offensive, and the whole physical and mental organization is dwarfed and injured. When he grows older he will crave spices and tobacco and alcohol to stimulate his abnormal appetite and give pungenewto tasteless though healthful food. No man who grows up from such childhood is going tohave the first positions of honor and trust and usefulness in the community where he lives. The men who hold those positions were fed with milk and bread and meat when they were young, and not with trash. Now, the mind like the body grows by what it feeds upon. The girl who fills her brain with silly, sentimental, lovesick stories grows up into a silly, sentimental, lackadaisical woman, useless for all the noble an"d substantial work of life. The boy who feeds on sensational newspapers and exciting novels has no intellectual muscle, no commanding .will to make his way in the world. Then, aside from the debilitating effect of such reading, the mind is poisoned by impure associations. These thrilling stories have always murder, or theft, or lying, or knavery as an integral part of their tissue, and boys while reading them live in the companionship of men and women, of boys and girls, with whom they would be ashamed to be seen conversing, whom they would never think of inviting to their houses and introducing to their friends, and whose very names they would not mention in polite society as associates and equals. Every book that one reads, no less than every dinner that one eats, becomes part and parcel of the individual, and we can no more read without injury an unwholesome book or periodical than we can eat tainted meat and not suffer thereby. Just as there are everywhere stores full of candy, and cake, and liquor, and tobacco, and spices, so there are everywhere books, newspapers and magazines full of the veriest trash, and abounding in everything boys and girls should not read. And just as the healthful stomach, passing all these pernicious baits, will choose sound aliment, so the healthful mind will reject the unwholesome literature current everywhere, and select such only as is intrinsically good. The other day we pi eked up a popular juvenile weekly, and presently found ourself knee-deep in slang, over our head in vulgar allusion, and in the midst of a low-lived metropolitan crowd, where cock-fights, dog-fights and man-fights were the condiments offered to whet the appetite for reading; and yet we know families where that paper is regularly taken. Do the parents read it? Do they know what company their children are keeping? But says the young inquirer, What shall we read, ana how shall we know "if books are suitable? Read such books as give you valuable information, histories, travels and those works of fiction that are approved by people of correct judgment. Our leading magazines contain a vast amount of reading, interesting alike to young and old. Do not read what renders distasteful the ordinary duties of life, or renders vice attractive, or makes you long for an impossible and romantic career. Scott, Cooper, Jules Verne, Washington Irving will never bring you into impure associations; and a correct taste, once formed and carefully consulted, will enable you to select the good and eschew the pernicious. “ Might I give counsel to any young hearer,” says Thackeray in hie lecture on Prior, Gay and Pope, “I would say to him, try to frequent the company of your betters. In books and life that is the most wholesome society; learn to admire rightly—the great pleasure of life is that. Note what the great men admired; they admired great things; narrow spirits admire basely and worship meanly.”— N. Y. Tribune.