Since the thrilling moment when GUTTENBURG made his celebrated
discovery, numbers of persons have tried their hands--and undoubtedly
their heads also--at Books for the Young. Hitherto, many of them have
evinced a sad lack of judgment in respect of matter.
Would you believe it, in this highly moral and virtuous age? they have
actually written stories!--stories that were not true! They haven't
seemed to care a button whether they told the truth or not! Where can
they have contracted the deadly heresy that imagination, feeling, and
affection, are good things, deserving encouragement? Mark the effect of
these pernicious teachings! Hundreds and thousands--nay, fellow mortal,
_millions_ of children,--now walk the earth, believing in fairies,
giants, ogres, and such-like unreal personages, and yet unable (we blush
to say it!) to tell why the globe we live on is flattened at the poles!
Is it not a serious question whether children who persistently ignore
what is true and important, but cherish fondly these abominable fables,
may not ultimately be lost?
But, thanks to the recent growth of practical sense--or the decline of
the inventive faculty--in writers for the young, a better day is
dawning, and there is still some hope for the world. Men of sense and
morality are coming forward: they dedicate their minds to this
service--those practical minds whence will be extracted the only true
pabulum for the growing intellect. It is to minds of this stamp--so
truly the antipodes of all that is youthful, spontaneous, and
child-like, (in a word: frivolous,) that we must look for those solid
works which, in the Millennium that is coming, will perfectly supplant
what may be termed, without levity, the "Cock and Bull" system of
juvenile entertainment. Worldly people may consider this stuff graceful
and touching, sweet and loveable; but it is nevertheless clearly
mischievous, else pious and proper persons wouldn't have said so, time
and again.
For our part, we may as well confess that our sympathies go out
undividedly toward that important class who are averse to
Nonsense,--more particularly _book_-nonsense,--which they can't stand,
and won't stand, and there's an end of it. There is something
exceedingly winning, to us, in that sturdy sense, that thirst for
mathematical precision, that impatience of theory, that positive and
self-reliant--we don't mind saying, somewhat dogmatical--air, that
sternness of feature, thinness of lip, and coldness of eye, which belong
to the best examples. We respect even the humbler ones; for they at
least hate sentiment, they do not comprehend or approve of humor, and
they never relish wit. What does a taste for these qualities indicate,
but an idle and frivolous mind, devoted to trifles: and how fatal is
such a taste, in the pursuit of wealth and respectability!
Fantastic people have much to say of the "affections," the "graces and
amenities of life," "soul-culture," and the like. We cannot too deeply
deplore their fatuity, in giving prominence to such abstractions. As for
children, the most we can concede is, that they have a natural--though,
of course, depraved--taste for stories: yes, we will say that this
fondness is irrepressible. But, what we really must insist on, is, that
in gratifying that fondness, you give them _true_ stories. Where is the
carefully trained and upright soul that would not reject "JACK, the
Giant-killer," or "Goody Two-shoes," if it could substitute (say, from
"New and True Stories for Children,") a tale as thrilling as this:
"When I was a boy, I said to my uncle one day, 'How did you
get your finger cut off?' and he said, 'I was chopping a
stick one evening, and the hatchet cut off my finger.'"
Blessings, blessings on the man who thus embalmed this touching
incident! Who does not see that the reign of fiction is over!
That the parental portion of the public may judge what the future has in
store for their little ones (who, we hope, will be men and women far
sooner than their ancestors were,) we present them with a fragrant
nosegay (pshaw! we mean, a shovel-full) of samples, commending them,
should they wish for more, to the nearest Sabbath-school library.
Ah, it is a touching thing, to see some great philanthropist come
forward, at the call of Duty and his Publisher (perhaps also quickened
by the hollow sound emitted by his treasure-box), and compress himself
into the absurdly small compass of a few pages 18mo., in order to afford
himself the exalted pleasure of holding simple and godly converse with
children at large!
"All truth--no fiction." What further guarantee would you have? How
replete with useful matter must not a book with _that_ assurance be! Let
us read:
"The Indians cannot build a ship. They do not Know how to get
iron from the mines, _and they do not know enough._
"Besides, they do not like to work, and like to fight
_better_ than to work.
"When they want to sail, they burn off a log of wood, and
make it hollow by burning and scraping it with sharp stones."
Now we ask, does not this satisfy your ideal of food for the youthful
mind? Observe that it is simple, direct, graphic, satisfying. It cannot
enfeeble the intellect. It will be useful. There is something tangible
about it. The child at once perceives that if the Indians knew how to
"get iron from the mines," and "knew enough" in general, they would
build ships, in spite of their distaste for work. There can be no doubt
that this is "all truth--no fiction," for Indians are sadly in want of
ships. They like to sail; for we learn that "when they want to sail"
they are so wild for it, that they even go to the length of "burning off
a log of wood, and making it hollow by burning and scraping it with
sharp stones." We thus perceive the significance of the apothegm, "Truth
is stranger than fiction." The day is not far distant when children will
think as much of the new literature as they formerly did of certain
worm-lozenges, for which they were said to "cry."
And where everything has been inspired by the love of Truth, even the
cuts may teach something. If "a canoe," contrary to the general
impression, is at least as long as "a ship," it is very important that
children should so understand it; and if "a pin-fish" is really as big
as "a shark," no mistaken deference to the feelings of the latter should
make us hesitate to say so.
No child, we are convinced, is too young to get ideas of science. In one
of the model books we are pleased to find this great truth distinctly
recognized:
"'Is there anything like a lever about a wheelbarrow?' said
his father. 'O yes, sir,' said JAMES. 'The axle; and the
wheel is the prop, the load is the weight, and the power is
your hand.'"
This, we should say, speaks for itself.
Nor is a child ever too young to get ideas of thrift. One of our writers
for infants observes, after explaining that the Dutch reclaimed the
whole of Holland from the sea by means of dykes, "they worked hard,
saved their money, and so grew rich." Any child can take such hints.
Neither is it wholly amiss to demonstrate that a child can't put a clock
in his pocket. For it is plain that he would else be trying to do so
sometime.
Now, where in the "Arabian Nights" do you find anything like this?--We
answer, triumphantly, Nowhere!
"'JAMES,' said his father, 'do not shut up hot water too
tight, and take care when it is over the fire.'
"'A lady was boiling coffee one day, and kept the cover on
the coffee-pot too long. When she took it off, the water
turned to steam, and flew up in her face, and took the skin
off.
"'Do you know how they make the wheels of a steamboat move?
They shut up water tight in a great kettle and heat it. Then
they open a hole which has a heavy iron bar in it, the steam
lifts it, in trying to get out. That bar moves a lever, and
the lever moves the wheels.
"'Machines are wonderful things.'"
This fact the reader must distinctly realize. And doesn't he realize
that the days of JACK, the Giant-killer, and Little Red Riding Hood, are
about over? We want truth. The only question is, (as FESTUS observed),
What is Truth?
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