The Youth Of Our Land

Thcre really ought to be some Iív.v against the sale of dime novéis to young boys. Instances occur almost daily where the minds of young boys have become so .listorted by readiug trash that they are ready to slaughter their fellow beings in large quantities. A boy who reads about some avenger of the prairie who chops and splits bis cord and a half of Indians regular every day, or some pirate whose scuppers run off enongh blood every minute to makc a hnntlred dollars worth of blood sausage, gets into an abuormal concütion of mimi and is vholly unfit for the solitl work and low -wages of real, every day life. He begins to accumulate pistols, daggers, and other old junk. and longs to run a poniard into somefalse Spaniard,and twist it around, vfhile he hisses throngh bis set teeth some drivel that he has read in a novel. Such a boy will notboecorn. Kear Peru, iu Illinois, the otber day, a sheriff i'ound a cave where a number of these boys whose minds had become inflated. had establishcd a sort of pirate's glen. The rates were not at home, being away probably on au expedition to capture a darkeyed Spanish beauty, or a bantam or shanghi beauty, and the sheriff entered the place and took an account of stock. All around were the sinister looking weapons of deatb, and the treasures and spoils ol" war, and ninong them were twelve bottles of lemon beer. This in itself ought to teach boy? that thero is no sucli thing as realizing what novéis teil about. ïliere nevel -was a novel yet that told about the duke pacing back and íorth -with a cloudcd brow, in th elegant drawing room of his castle, and then going to the sideboard and draining a flagon of lemou beer. Not any. The duke ahvays drains a flagon of fine old Rhenish wine, seven hundred years old, before he sets out to mutílate a couplc of townships of people. A boy ought to see by this that if he is going to try and ]ow the dnke'sexample be wiü have to use old Rhenish wine instead of lemon beer. And where would be the fim in slaugbtering thoso tivo townships of people with a skin full of lemon beer or pop? It would be insipid. And not only that, but ridiculons. Suppose the duke should draw his rapier to run .1 person through the body, and just as he was about to say, "Die, illain," the gas froni the lemon beer should tome up in his nose. ]Ie would l'eel like a looi. A boy who reads a novel, and becomes all wrought up and excited, never thinks of ibis. Neithcrdoes he think who it is that writes the novel. Il he could see the author ot' the novel- who is sorae poor devil in 1 New York garret, who haB starved himself half to death for jnoney to buy whisky, and who changes his quarters every month to save rent - he would be ashamed to be Been reading such stufi'. The poor broken down scribbler who writes about the brilliant diaiuonds of inestimable valué that ilashed upon the bosom of the eouBteaa, ia probahly weering a sheel ui' w riting paper for a shirt front.- Pech' e '■un. They were twins. The parents christened one of them Kate and the other Duplil cate.