Once more and for all, the career of a novel reader should be entered
upon, if at all, under the age of fourteen. As much earlier as possible.
The life of the intellect, as of its shadowy twin, imagination, begins
early and develops miraculously. The inbred strains of nature lie
exposed to influence as a mirror to reflections, and as open to
impression as sensitized paper, upon which pictures may be printed
and from which they may also fade out. The greater the variety of
impressions that fall upon the young mind the more certain it is that
the greatest strength of natural tendency will be touched and revealed.
Good or bad, whichever it may be, let it come out as quickly as
possible. How many men have never developed their fatal weaknesses until
success was within reach and the edifice fell upon other innocent ones.
Believe me, no innate scoundrel or brute will be much helped or hindered
by stories. These have no turn or leisure for dreaming. They are eager
for the actual touch of life. What would a dull-eyed glutton, famishing,
not with hunger but with the cravings of digestive ferocity, find in
Thackeray's “Memorials of Gormandizing” or “Barmecidal Feasts?” Such
banquets are spread for the frugal, not one of whom would swap that
immortal cook-book review for a dinner with Lucullus. Rascals will not
read. Men of action do not read. They look upon it as the gambler does
upon the game where “no money passes.” It may almost be said that the
capacity for novel-reading is the patent of just and noble minds. You
never heard of a great novel-reader who was notorious as a criminal.
There have been literary criminals, I grant you--Eugene Aram Dr. Dodd,
Prof. Webster, who murdered Parkmaan, and others. But they were writers,
not readers And they did not write novels. Mr. Aram wrote scientific and
school books, as did Prof. Webster, and Dr. Wainwright wrote beautiful
sermons. We never do sufficiently consider the evil that lies behind
writing sermons. The nearest you can come to a writer of fiction who
has been steeped in crime is in Benvenuto Cellini, whose marvelous
autobiographical memoir certainly contains some fiction, though it is
classed under the suspect department of History.
How many men actually have been saved from a criminal career by the
miraculous influence of novels? Let who will deny, but at the age of
six I myself was absolutely committed to the abandoned purpose of riding
barebacked horses in a circus. Secretly, of course, because there were
some vague speculations in the family concerning what seemed to be
special adaptability to the work of preaching. Shortly after I gave that
up to enlist in the Continental Army, under Gen. Francis Marion, and no
other soldier slew more Britons. After discharge I at once volunteered
in an Indiana regiment quartered in my native town in Kentucky, and beat
the snare drum at the head of that fine body of men for a long time. But
the tendency was downward. For three months I was chief of a of robbers
that ravaged the backyards of the vicinity. Successively I became a spy
for Washington, an Indian fighter, a tragic actor.
With character seared, abandoned and dissolute in habit through and
by the hearing and seeing and reading of history, there was but one
desperate step left So I entered upon the career of a pirate in my ninth
year. The Spanish Main, as no doubt you remember, was at that time upon
an open common across the street from our house, and it was a hundred
feet long, half as wide and would average two feet in depth. I have
often since thanked Heaven that they filled up that pathless ocean in
order to build an iron foundry upon the spot. Suppose they had excavated
for a cellar! Why during the time that Capt. Kidd, Lafitte and I
infested the coast thereabout, sailing three “low, black-hulled
schooners with long rakish masts,” I forced hundreds of merchant seamen
to walk the plank--even helpless women and children. Unless the sharks
devoured them, their bones are yet about three feet under the floor of
that iron foundry. Under the lee of the Northernmost promontory, near
a rock marked with peculiar crosses made by the point of the stiletto
which I constantly carried in my red silk sash, I buried tons of plate,
and doubloons, pieces of eight, pistoles, Louis d'ors, and galleons by
the chest. At that time galleons somehow meant to me money pieces in
use, though since then the name has been given to a species of boat. The
rich brocades, Damascus and Indian stuffs, laces, mantles, shawls and
finery were piled in riotous profusion in our cave where--let the whole
truth be told if it must--I lived with a bold, black-eyed and coquettish
Spanish girl, who loved me with ungovernable jealousy that occasionally
led to bitter and terrible scenes of rage and despair. At last when I
brought home a white and red English girl whose life I spared because
she had begged me her knees by the memory of my sainted mother to spare
her for her old father, who was waiting her coming, Joquita passed all
bounds. I killed her--with a single knife thrust I remember. She was
buried right on the spot where the Tilden and Hendricks flag pole
afterwards stood in the campaign of 1876. It was with bitter melancholy
that I fancied the red stripes on the flag had their color from the
blood of the poor, foolish jealous girl below.
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