JUDICIOUS READING OF THE PERIODICAL PRESS.
There is room for good judgment in everything, and daily reading is no exception to the rule. It has come to pass that periodical publications take up a large part of the time and attention of readers, and the tendency in the case is for this kind of printed page to draw too heavily upon us. Most persons in towns read too much newspaper and too little book. The newspapers are abundant, are good as newspapers, and they are full of matter. They claim first attention because they contain the news; they keep attention because the news is abundantly padded, and because the newspaper furnishes other attractive reading. Two or three bad effects of confining ourselves to such reading must be experienced. One is that a feverish interest in events of no great importance is created, and our thoughts revolve about such events. Another bad effect is that the knowledge of the newspaper devourer is imperfect, scrappy, and mixed with errors of fact and principle. The newspaper is produced in haste. Editors have no time to verify all facts and sift out unsound opinions. It is a kind of intellectual bar-room, where all sorts jostle each other and live in good fellowship. The very copiousness and breadth of the journal create a need of better and more accurate reading. Its fragments need to be pieced together by wider knowledge than it gives. It is not enough to say that the present reading habits of our people give to the newspaper the first position as a teacher of the people; one should go on to reflect that this education is not by any means the best. It is too fragmentary and disconnected. The tendency which we regret is not the fault of the press, but it none the less requires the corrective of some kind of restraint upon its habit of monopolizing so large a portion of our time. One may easily learn to read the paper swiftly, get its proper value in a few moments and pass on. Information in more connected and complete forms invites our attention to books; and an intelligent person should save some time for these more valuable products of the press. There is a place, in short, for good judgment in limiting the intellectual tax which the newspaper levies upon us.
Good sense and sound discretion have a place also in our selection of newspapers. They differ, not exactly as one star differeth from another star in glory, but rather as a pure article of merchandise differs from an adulterated article. A clean press, in the general sense of the term, has almost become the rule; but there are still many unclean papers. The obviously unclean are easily shunned. Our danger comes from periodicals conducted for particular ends, to gain which the proprietors will on occasion sacrifice purity. A body of ministers, the Cincinnati Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, has recently condemned in the strongest terms a newspaper long honored for its purity, which has recently depreciated the importance of personal chastity in public men. The incident and its cause are a warning that newspapers change their tone as they change editors, and that a strong desire to promote some object may blind an editor and stain the fairest page. There is but one remedy for this form of the evil, and that is to cast out the newspaper which is guilty of the offense. There is need of caution at this point, because a favorite newspaper, like the king in absolutism, can do no wrong. We grow accustomed to believing it right, to accepting its teachings, to dropping all critical safeguards and taking for good and sound opinions whatever it may deliver to us. This is not a safe habit. Editors like William Cullen Bryant die and their successors may be of another spirit. Few newspapers are the same in moral complexion for twenty years; death and business changes inevitably alter them. Even our favorite newspaper needs watching; and we ought never to condone so gross an outrage on the sanctities of life as the one to which we have reluctantly referred.
Another place for good judgment is in selecting the kind of periodical literature we read. There is a great variety. Some are too light; some are too heavy. Some are frivolous in spirit and purpose; others are so solid that they weigh down the eyelids of the reader. It is not necessary that good reading should be dull, lifeless and soporific. On the other hand, the periodicals which live upon love of fiction and curiosity are too light for the use of people who are living on purpose and for some proper ends. The popular magazine is too light. It is, at best, like dress worn to be looked at rather than for comfort and warmth. The ornamental has become too prominent and too monopolizing. The readers of the popular periodical add little to their wisdom and nothing to their aspirations. Really good results from periodical reading must be had in one of two ways or not at all. Wisdom or inspiration—or both—should come to us from such reading. We are stating the creed and the platform of The Chautauquan. Its special aims are these two: We wish to increase the knowledge of our readers; we wish also to inspire them with two forms of zeal, one which pursues wisdom, and another which aims at sound and pure character. We believe that we help our readers by giving them information and an appetite for it, and that those who read The Chautauquan carefully are stimulated by it to intellectual and moral effort. It has seemed to us that the inspiring quality has disappeared from the average monthly. Indeed, if we look for it in these days we must search in periodicals which have a definite and pronounced moral purpose. There is a pestilent theory that good literature must have only an artistic purpose, that to be in bloody earnest is not good form in letters. The Chautauquan is in earnest; it is the organ of one of the most vigorous and aggressive organizations for popular improvement, and its tone and matter are fixed for it by the high purpose of that organized crusade against ignorance and its consequences. We are not content to please or to satisfy passing curiosity. The whim or incident of the hour gets little of our attention. We are concerned with permanent and useful things. We desire to enlarge the horizon of our readers and fix their interest upon the best and tested objects of living. We are confident that any habitual reader of ours will be made wiser and better. There is not much glitter about such results, and yet they will shine when aimless literature has long ceased to glitter.