OUR GIRLS''READING.

Otago Witness, Issue 2416, 28 June 1900, Page 61

OUR GIRLS' 'READING.

"The new books are all rubbish — mere flimsiness and empty sensationalism," is the despairing cry of many reflective readers at the present lime. Go into a university lecv ture room, and you will hear the same cry repea,ted. "Devote yourself to the classics," the professors urgo upon the students ; "the modern books are empty and devoid of culture. There is no gcod to be got from them." Though lovers of such writers as Barrie and Kipling will emphatically agree that this is an exaggeration, there is yet undeniable truth in it. Never before in the known history of the world wos there suoh a large yearly output of books as in the present time, and surely never before was there such superabundance of fourth and fifth rate productions.

Every year there are hundreds of new books published and sold and — generally — read. A small proportion of them are valuable works of scieuce, and jrtiilpspphy,, TJiege are, read,

by the cultured few. Others are pleasant, chatty talks- — somebody's travels or impressions. Here and there at wide intervals is a gem of glowing romance set in the pure gold of Anglo-Saxon English. But the greater number provoke only a sigh of utter weariness as we close the covers, and the question in our hearts is: "Why are such books ever printed? Entirely lacking in imagination, written in execrable English, and often low in moral tone, for what purpose," we despairingly apk, "were such books written? And why should publishers launch such evils upon a suffering world?" The only possible answer is that the world requires these books at the hands of those who cater to its reading appetite; that it a*lis for rubbish and will have it, whilst disdaining the wealth of noble thought it already possesses in the words of lho«e whose wort's have stood the tests of time and have been the help and comfort of the giants of the past. "Give us something light and new," the world cries; and so long as' it is light and new and cheap — and often nasty — they are satisfied, and will talk eagerly about "So-and-so's new book — so nice, you know, and so exciting. I read it all through in one evening." And the book becomes popular, perhaps, and runs through several editions — and readers who look for help in their life work from the books they read wonder amazedly what chord has been touched in the public mind, and why people can be satisfied with the lowest, when the highest is within their reach.

The reply to such a query is to be found in the lack of guidance our children receive in their reading. Look through any prize list of children's books, any Sunday school or public school library, and you will find all the materials for the formation of a low standard of judgment. Books which would do no good, but often much harm, to older and maturer minds are put into the hands of children, and are allowed unchecked to mould the taste and judgment of these inexperienced readers, and often to distort their mental vision and moral instincts. A child of particularly robust mind may wander at will through the unculled wilderness of a bookseller's stores, and may emerge sound and healthy in spirit after all ; but to an ordinary child such a course is dangerous alike to its mental and moral nature. A great amount of care, of quiet but inflexible guidance, should be bestowed upon every child's reading, or the evil effects of misdirected mental effort will be painfully apparent in after life. Tako the case of a sensitive child, prone to be easily influenced by her reading, and born, as many sensitive natures are, with a natural desire to "be good." She is perhaps a bookworm also by nature, and would, if properly guided, become a reader of good books and even perhaps a student and thinker; but she is left to read whatever comes in her way, and the results are disastrous to an extent of which parents have no conception. She has picture books and story books of all kinds, but, being by nature gentle and easily touched, those books which rouse her pity and stir the pathetic side of her character are the ones to which she will most naturally incline. Hence, she will tell you that her favourite book is the "Wide, Wide World," or "Melbourne House," or pome other equally morbid and melancholy production, in which the heroine of ten or twelve weeps so many times to each chapter, and spends the rest of the time repenting of her own enormous iniquities, or bearing with a beautiful, martyrli'ke resignation the grievous sinfulness of her elders.

What is the result of constantly reading this sort of thing? The sensitive little reader—anxious to "be good," sees here a pattern laid out for her. She must be good in the same way. So &he, too, weeps a little and tries to be as painf'illy priggish and impossibly piecccious as her favemrite 151] c-n or "Daisy : and when, a few days later, she finds her own sweet child-nature happily forgetful of the bords in wh'eh eha has tried to confine it, she repents of her waywurdiies-3 as of a sin, and leads again, and weeps and laphes herself ai.e\v, and loses all her pimple child-nature in tlia effort to remodel herself into such an unnatural, self-centred little prig as Miss Welherell invariably paints. But this is not the worst of tho case. The sensitive child might yet outgrow such a phieo of fealing, if she were now directed to different reading. But she has formed the ta.«te for this style of book, and if left to herself will invariably choose it from among all oibers. As time goes on, she probably reads the "Pansy" series, with its hysterics and utter want of logical thought ; while still in her early teens she becomes enamoured of Augusta Wilson's passionate love scenes, with their strange jumble of pioiisness and impossibility, and their misleading pictures of life and men and things ; E. P. Roe follows, with loindred authors; and she eventually develops into a woman who finds delight in Annie Swan, rovers Edna Lyall, and follows with wondering awe the hysterical spitefulness of Marie Oorelli's erratic wanderings. The whole beautiful world of wider thought is shut out, and the intellect is narrowed to the consideration of the petty aims and feelings of tho puppets of feeble minds', while the glorious creations of the towering intellects of genius remain, even if known, entirely unappreciated. Take another case. The- child in this instance is perhaps of a strcmtpf-r or more passionate nature. Despising "goody-goody books," as she calls them, she stumbles into darker places. She gets hold of light and sensational novels at an early age, and we are electrified by seeing a child of ten writing to the Little Folk's Column in the Otago Witness, giving in a list of her favourite books the name of "East Lyime." With such a start as this ths child will naturally go through a course of Mrs Henry Wood and kindred authors. — Miss Braddon for preference — with the Young Ladies' Journal thrown in as a relish, and will eventually develop such a taste for the portrayal of passion— and that alone — that nothing will interest her that is not at once frothy and sensational. Hence the wide popularity of the sex novel of to-day, with its continual harping on the lower aspects of human nature, and its ill-written superficiality. Again the wider thought is shut out, but in its place is an insatiable longing for the experience of emotions and passions such as are met with only in these books, and arc quite incompatible with the self-restraint of a well-directed life.

What then is the remedy for this lack of taste in our girls' reading? Surely the most effecttial remedy is a thoughtful, practical supervision of their early literature — a supervision strict but tactful, and not to be attained withmit much care and anxious consideration. Such a supervision will exclude morbidness and unnaturalaess fiom a child's books, bub will include everything joyous and bright and clothed with the glowing robes of imagination. It will begin with gay pictur.e books and nursery rhymes, and the pretty animal stories and nonsense verses which are to be met ■with, in abundance in the children's magazines of to-day. It will follow these up with such healthy reading as Kingsley's and Lewis Carroll's books for children, with Hans Anderson's fairy tales, and Rudyard Kipling's Jungle Books. Then there are great numbers of gojod fe_QoJas written uowadaya f ok gi£la

-such books as those of Louisa Allcott and ithel Turner — and many more would be writen if there were greater demand for rhem — looks in which real fun and healthy tentiment re combined with vigorous action and good ound English. From such a beginning the oung reader will pass by easy fctagos, on to /harles Kingsley, Dickens, Scott, and Thackeay, and will revel in the glorious new world hus opened up. The poets*, Nathaniel tiawhorno. and George Eliot will follow, and ventually Oliver VVendell Ilo3me& and John tuskin. Nov.* a good foundation is laid, and corract though perhaps unconscious standrd of judgment is formed in the reader's iiind. Fro n the poets and such groat noveists as Gecrge Eliot, she has unconsciously mbibed such a taste for all that is beautiful nd pure and refined that anything less than he highest art does not satisfy her nature, for he feels intuitively that the highest art is the imple&fc presentation of truth. All that ie

I low in tone, or untruthful m presentation, or inartistic in finish repels the trained mind, and the girl finds herself possessed of a power: k of discrimination whicli enables her to separate the sheep from the goats in her reading, to rejoice in such a book as "The Choir Invisible," or "Aylwin" when it appears, and to discern at a glance the weakness and useIgsmigss of mere sensationalism. Her mind lias become so well balanced and adjusted that expansion is unlimited. Travels, biographies, and even science form part of her reading as she progres.-es, and clay by day fresh vistas of thought are opened up and new sources of delight are discovered. For her the great thinkers think and the great poets sing : for her the whole common horde of lower writers is but as a whispering crowd behind, while ever before her are strong exultant voices calling her on to higher planes of thought and feeling and noble impulse. JON. -