Much as I disliked the restriction then, I am now sincerely grateful that my Puritan father not only commanded me not to read novels, but successfully prohibited the temptation from coming in his children’s way. Until I was fifteen years old I never saw a volume of the kind. “Pilgrim’s Progress” was the nearest approach we made, but it seems profanation to refer to that choice English classic in this degenerate connection. [I should add that Rev. Dr. Tefft’s “Shoulder Knot” was also early read at our house, in the Ladies’ Repository; but, then, that delightful work was a historical story, and even my father praised it.]
A kind and garrulous seamstress who declared that this law of our household was “a shame,” told us what she could remember of “The Children of the Abbey,” and finally brought in, surreptitiously, “Jane Eyre” and “Thaddeus of Warsaw.” But the glamor of those highly seasoned pages was unhealthful and made “human nature’s daily food,” the common pastoral life we led, and nature’s soothing beauty seem so tame and tasteless that the revulsion was my life’s first sorrow. How evanescent and unreal was the pleasure of such reading; a sort of spiritual hasheesh eating with hard and painful waking; a benumbing of the healthful, every-day activities of life; a losing of so much that was simple and sweet, to gain so little that was, at best, a fevered and fantastic vision of utter unreality. In all the years since then I have believed that novel writing, save for some high, heroic moral aim, while the most diversified, is the most unproductive of all industries! The young people who read the greatest quantity of novels know the least, and are the dullest in aspect, and the most vapid in conversation. The flavor of individuality has been burnt out of them, always imagining themselves in an artificial relation to life, always content to look through their author’s glasses, they become as commonplace as pawns upon a chess board. “Sir, we had good talk!” was Sam Johnson’s highest praise of any whom he met. But any talk save the dreariest commonplace and most tiresome reiteration is impossible with the regulation reader of novels or player of games. And this is, in my judgment, because God, by the very laws of mind, must punish those who kill time instead of cultivating it. For time is the stuff that life is made of; the crucible of character, the arena of achievement, and woe to those who fritter it away. They can not help paying great nature’s penalty, and “mediocre,” “failure,” or “imbecile” will surely be stamped upon their foreheads. Therefore I would have each generous youth and maiden say to every story-spinner, except the few great names that can be counted on the fingers of one hand: “I really can not patronize your wares, and will not furnish you my head for a football, or my fancy for a sieve. By writing these books you get money and a fleeting, unsubstantial fame, but by reading them I should turn my possibility of success in life to the certainty of failure. Myself plus time is the capital stock with which the good Heavenly Father has pitted me against the world to see if I can gain some foothold. I can not afford to be a mere spectator. I am a wrestler for the laurel in life’s Olympian games. I can make history, why should I maunder in a hammock and read the endless repetitions of romance? No, find yourself a cheaper pattern, for I count myself too valuable for the sponge-like use that you would put me to.”
Nay, I would have our young people reach a higher key than this. Because of life’s real story with its mystery and pathos; because of the romance that crowds into every year; the plot that thickens daily, and the tragedy that lies a little way beyond; because of Christ and his kingdom—the mightiest drama of the ages, let us be up and doing with a heart for any fate. Humanity is worth our while; to love, to bless, to work for it.
“The cause that lacks assistance,
The wrong that needs resistance;
The future in the distance
And the good that we can do.”
These ought to be the bread of life to us, the tireless inspiration of each full day of honest toil. God meant this to be so, for only thus do we cease chasing about for happiness, and find blessedness instead.
I thought, while fresh in mind, to sketch a real, live, every-day romance of which my heart is full; and I ask true hearts to cherish the impetus it is capable of giving toward noble character and Christlike deeds.