Popular amusements.: By Rev. J.T. Crane ... With an introduction, by Bishop E.S. Janes.

NOVEZLS AND NO VEL-READING.. I145
eyes of passengers are almost invariably pictures of somebody shooting or stabbing somebody. The last embellishment which I have
noticed, however, is a cut of somebody strangling the other somebody with his naked hands.
This is doubtless still more delightfully horrible to the admirers of this style of writing,
and calculated to thrill them with a new sensation. When the mind has become so vitiated that it turns away not only from all solid
reading, but even from the less objectionable
works of fiction, to revel in nauseous descriptions of lawless passions and bloody deeds,
and is so besotted with them that every thing
else is void of interest, and every duty irksome, how far is it removed from some of the
worst evils of drunkenness or even of insanity itself? How much worse is the victim of
alcohol or opium than the victim of mental
intoxication?
6. The habitual reading of novels tends to lessen the reader's horror of crime and wickedness.
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