UNCHASTITY 223 



know who wrote it, who illustrated it, who published it, 

 who sold it. 



A Modern Plague.— ''It seems that in the litera- 

 ture of the day, the ten plagues of Egypt have returned, 

 and the frogs and lice have hopped and skipped over 

 our parlor tables. 



''Parents are delighted to have their children read, 

 but they should be sure as to what they read. You do 

 not have to walk a day or two in an infested district to 

 get the cholera or typhoid fever; and one wave of 

 moral unhealth will fever and blast the soul forever. 

 Perhaps, knowing not what you did, you read a bad 

 book. Do you not remember it altogether?— Yes; and 

 perhaps you will never get over it. However strong 

 and exalted your character, never read a bad book. 

 By the time you get through the first chapter, you will 

 see the drift. If you find the marks of the hoofs of the 

 devil in the picture, or in the style, or in the plot, away 

 with it. 



"But there is more danger, I think, from many of 

 the family papers, published once a week, in those 

 stories of vice and shame, full of infamous suggestions, 

 going as far as they can without exposing themselves 

 to the clutch of the law. I name none of them ; but say 

 that on some fashionable tables there lie 'family news- 

 papers' that are the very vomit of the pit. 



"The way to ruin is cheap. It costs three dollars 

 to go to Philadelphia; six dollars to Boston; thirty- 

 three dollars to Savannah; but, by the purchase of a 

 bad paper for ten cents, you may get a through ticket 

 to hell, by express, with few stopping-places, and the 

 final halting, like the tumbling of the lightning train 

 down the draw-bridge at Norwalk— sudden, terrific, 

 deathful, never to rise." 



14 . . . 



