s or thieves, in emulation of Sir Richard Turpin, Lord John
Sheppard, and other knights of the road whose careers are set forth in
the shining pages of biographical romance. French youngsters have a
like exemplar in Louis Cartouche. Two San Francisco lads are now in
jail for trying to rob a stagecoach, in Claude Duval style--luckless
little victims, knocked down by the passengers in a way not recorded in
the novels that had ruined them. Lads are for ever running away to sea
in imitation of some Jack Halyard or Ben the Bo's'n; and surely we know
that urchins of all ages and sizes are picked up on their way west to
"fight Injuns," thanks to their dogs'-eared dime novels narrating the
prowess of Buffalo Bills and Texas Jacks. Boyish sympathy goes out
toward the Paul Cliffords, the Arams of romance. I remember, as if it
were of yesterday, the sad fate of Red Rover, and how the overwrought
little reader, when he came to the hero's death, put by the book that
he could not finish, and walked about in the twilight of a Saturday
whose hours had slipped unnoticed away, inconsolable with sympathy and
grief.

But the preacher need not rest his case on "Mike Martin," or "Rinaldo
Rinaldini," or "The Black Avenger of the Spanish Main," or any of the
predatory heroes embalmed in story for the improvement of youth, since
he has also the field of poisonous French romance to complain of, with
its imitations in our tongue. In short, he can indict in a lump the bad
books of fiction, and against the good he may charge that they exhaust
our tears and passion on imaginary distresses.

Still, nothing would then have been said of novels which could not be
said in a degree of the newspapers, the drama, the law, the pulpit
itself. We must not judge them by their worst fruits. "Pamela" was
praised from the pulpits of its day, although, to be sure, it would
hardly now be given to young women. I well remember, when prowling
about the homestead bookcase, coming upon Rowland Hill's "Village
Dialogues." Their characters were fictitious, the distresses imaginary;
still I presume the St. Louis preacher would not object to "Socinianism
Unmasked," the "Evils of Seduction," and the "Awful Death of Alderman
Greedy." Everybody sees how fiction is a weapon of philanthropy. Christ
himself taught by parables. Clergymen resort to romance to achieve what
the sermon cannot do, and men of science to achieve what the essay
cannot do. Religious newspapers publish seri