WHAT BOOKS TO LEND
AND
WHAT TO GIVE.
INTRODUCTION.
Wholesome and amusing literature has become almost a necessity among the appliances of parish work. The power of reading leads, in most cases, to the craving for books. If good be not provided, evil will be only too easily found, and it is absolutely necessary to raise the taste so as to lead to a voluntary avoidance of the profane and disgusting.
Books of a superior class are the only means of such cultivation. It has been found that where really able and interesting literature is to be had, there is much less disposition to prey upon garbage. And the school lessons on English have this effect, that they make book-language comprehensible far more widely than has hitherto been the case.
A library is an almost indispensable adjunct to a school, if the children are to be lured to stay at home instead of playing questionable games in the dark, or by gaslight, out of doors; and an amusing story is the best chance of their not exasperating the weary father with noise. If the boy is not to betake himself to ‘Jack Sheppard’ literature, he must be beguiled by wholesome adventure. If the girl is not to study the ‘penny dreadful,’ her notions must be refined by the tale of high romance or pure pathos.
The children at school are often eager readers, especially if they have sensible parents who forbid roaming about in the evening. There ought always to be a school library unless the children are provided for in the general parish library; but even this requires careful selection. Weak, dull, or unnatural books may be absolutely harmful when falling into rude or scornful hands. For instance, a country lad should not have a book where a farmer gives a prize for climbing an elm-tree to take a blackbird’s nest, such a proceeding being equally against the nature of farmers, blackbirds, and elms. Seafaring lads should not have incorrectly worded accounts of wrecks; and where more serious matters come in, there should be still greater care to be strong, true, and real. Boys especially should not have childish tales with weak morality or ‘washy’ piety; but should have heroism and nobleness kept before their eyes; and learn to despise all that is untruthful or cowardly and to respect womanhood. True manhood needs, above all earthly qualities, to be impressed on them, and books of example (not precept) with heroes, whose sentiments they admire, may always raise their tone, sometimes individually, sometimes collectively.
Men, however, must have manly books. Real solid literature alone will arrest their attention. They grudge the trouble of reading what they do not accept as truth, unless it is some book whose fame has reached their ears, and to have read which they regard as an achievement.
Where grown men are subscribers to a library, it should have standard works of well-known reputation.