DO FATHERS CARE?

New Zealand Tablet, Volume X, Issue 514, 16 February 1883, Page 9

DO FATHERS CARE?

(From Harper's Magazine.) The old-fashioned stories .which the unhappy boys of the last generation read have been succeeded by the manly aud fascinating criminar novel. In the old story books it was assumed that truthfulness, honesty and obedience to parents were virtues, and that the Christian religion was not wholly devoid of merit. If these views were not directly taught in the juvenile literature of our fathers, at all events they were never directly or indirectly attacked. Boys could learn nothing from their story books except preposterous platitudes—nothing that was of any practical use, or that tended to develop in them manly and brilliant traits. No such complaint can be made of the dime and half -dime novels of the criminal school which are now read by all oar boys, either openly or secretly. In these delightful stories new forms of profanity and slang are taught in the most effective way. The pleasures of burglary and highway robbbery, the manliness of gambling and fighting, and the heroism of successful lying, are set forth in what is regarded by youthful readers as glowing eloquence ; while the great truths that all parents are tyrants, that all religious young people are hypocrites, and that disobedience to fathers and teachers is obedience to the noble instincts of juvenile nature, are sedulously taught. Such stories as these develop all that is manly and lawless in our boys, and teach them lessons that cannot fail to be of immense service to them in whatever criminal career they may adopt. There are a few old-fashioned people who denounce the new juvenile literature in unsparing terms, but that neavly all fathers approve of it is self-evident. They know that their boys are reading novels illustrative of the excellence of crime, but they make no effort to suppress that sort of literature, as they certainly would do did they disapprove of it. Nothing would be simpler than to drive these novels out of existence. All that would be necessary to do would be to " Boycott" the newsdealers who keep them for sale. The truth evidently is that fathers do not care what their boys read, or that they have no fault to find with " Jack Harkaway" and the " Boy Burglars." It cannot be that respectable gentlemen, who dislike crime, profanity and vulgarity wilfully refuse to know what their boys are reading, or weakly hope that by some happy chance their reading will do no harm.