The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, OCTOBER 17,. 1907. SOME POISONED PRINT

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXV, Issue 42, 17 October 1907, Page 21

The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, OCTOBER 17,. 1907. SOME POISONED PRINT

MRANKLAND' LEWIS once said of the serious and (occasionally) leaden books of his son - George : ' I wish that George could<n't-write, or that I couldn't read '. The same might ' well be said of two classes of authors and two classes of readers in New Zealand. We refer to the poisonous adventure-books of c'e '^ 3 % fhe .' Deadwood Dick ' and ' Daring Dick's Dagger ' type, and to the risky, or ' problem ', or sex novel, or the high-spiced sensational romance, that plays upon the mind of the reader a havoc akin to that which dram-drinking plays upon the body. The world would indeed' be the richer if the authors of. these pernicious forms of fiction had not learned to write, oi" their readers never mastered the alphabet or caught the ken of the printed page. One of the uneasy symptoms of our fime in New Zealand is- the increased fmportation and the promiscuous exposure- and sale the sort of fiction— written by lost souls— that corrupts the minds aria" morals of boys and youths. A few months • ago a gang of Boys in the North Island, fired by the perusal, of the coarse' penny dreadful ', anned _. themselves, took "to the hills, and became ajiijateur ,bushrangers. Another sign of the times was pointed out in our news columns last week': — / ' Among some books stolen by four boys who were before the Christchurch Court was a .bundle of the '• Dea-dwood Dick " type. Mr. V. G-. Day, S.M., remarked that he was surprised that a reputable firm like the one" from which the goods were stolen should stock such, rubbish. Such reading matter was the means "of instilling wrong ideas into the heads ot youths, and led to offences being commit, ted which would otherwise never have been . dreamed .of. He could- not confiscate the " dreadfuls ", but he would be verjr, pleased to set fire to them if he could.' - ~ * s . The ease with which mere boys can steep their minds in this, pestiferous stufi imposes a fresh obligation upon parents and teachers. And, in all the circumstances, it is, we think, about high time that the arm of the law should be stretched out to protect the minds of children from the- foul contagion that is contained in the ' pages •of some of this class of literature. • * As regards the reading habits of adult habitues .of our public circulating libraries, there are few in New Zealand better fitted' to form an opinion than } the 'cultured vice-president of the Dunedin , Athenaeum. .In February, 19D6, we quoted from an interesting lecture of his to the following effect : That the chief demand is for fiction ; that- 89.3 per cent, of all the books

taken ouTi of the Dunedin Athenaeum were novels ; and, worse still, that ' the quality of some books which are in very great demand is of the poorest. ' Compared with fiction ', said ■ Mr. Whitson, 'the circulation of - books in other departments of literature is productive o£^- ' sorrowful reflection's \ The great mass of -the noveldevouring public are finical about" their "tea and beer and beef, and tobacco. But they seem to have no standard by which -to judge of the quality of the printed ■ stuff on which they feast. For many of those more particularly referred to here, novel-reading is not so much a recreation as a passion — something akin to the , taste of topers for fiery waters, or of Anglo-Indians for red-hot condiments, As matters' stand, the Carnegie libraries, as to their circulating side, are very likely to be chiefly devoted'to the .spread of a class of sensational, risky, or namby-pamby fiction that the world could Very well go without. If this~is to be -the chief result of his benefactions, the money would have been better sunk ,in the sea a thousand fathoms deep, or in a repetition of the Laputan experiments for extracting sunbeams from cucumbers.