Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners Part 56

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Poisonous Literature and Bad Pictures.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PALESTINE WATER CARRIERS.]

1. OBSCENE LITERATURE.--No other source contributes so much to s.e.xual immorality as obscene literature. The ma.s.s of stories published in the great weeklies and the cheap novels are mischievous. When the devil determines to take charge of a young soul, he often employs a very ingenious method. He slyly hands a little novel filled with "voluptuous forms," "reclining on bosoms," "languis.h.i.+ng eyes," etc.

2. MORAL FORCES.--The world is full of such literature. It is easily accessible, for it is cheap, and the young will procure it, and therefore become easy prey to its baneful influence and effects. It weakens the moral forces of the young, and they thereby fall an easy prey before the subtle schemes of the libertine.

3. BAD BOOKS.--Bad books play not a small part in the corruption of the youth. A bad book is as bad as an evil companion. In some respects it is even worse than a living teacher of vice, since it may cling to an individual at all times. It will follow him and poison his mind with the venom of evil. The influence of bad books in making bad boys and men is little appreciated. Few are aware how much evil seed is being sown among the young everywhere through the medium of vile books.

4. SENSATIONAL STORY BOOKS.--Much of the evil literature which is sold in nickel and dime novels, and which const.i.tutes the princ.i.p.al part of the contents of such papers as the "Police Gazette," the "Police News," and a large proportion of the sensational story books which flood the land. You might better place a coal of fire or a live viper in your bosom, than allow yourself to read such a book. The thoughts that are implanted in the mind in youth will often stick there through life, in spite of all efforts to dislodge them.

5. PAPERS AND MAGAZINES.--Many of the papers and magazines sold at our news stands, and eagerly sought after by young men and boys, are better suited for the parlors of a house of ill-fame than for the eyes of pure-minded youth. A newsdealer who will distribute such vile sheets ought to be dealt with as an educator in vice and crime, an agent of evil, and a recruiting officer of h.e.l.l and perdition.

6. SENTIMENTAL LITERATURE OF LOW FICTION.--Sentimental literature, whether impure in its subject matter or not, has {422} a direct tendency in the direction of impurity. The stimulation of the emotional nature, the instilling of sentimental ideas into the minds of the young, has a tendency to turn the thoughts into a channel which leads in the direction of the formation of vicious habits.

7. IMPRESSIONS LEFT BY READING QUESTIONABLE LITERATURE.--It is painful to see strong intelligent men and youths reading bad books, or feasting their eyes on filthy pictures, for the practice is sure to affect their personal purity. Impressions will be left which cannot fail to breed a legion of impure thoughts, and in many instances criminal deeds. Thousands of elevator boys, clerks, students, traveling men, and others, patronize the questionable literature counter to an alarming extent.

8. THE NUDE IN ART.--For years there has been a great craze after the nude in art, and the realistic in literature. Many art galleries abound in pictures and statuary which cannot fail to fan the fires of sensualism, unless the thoughts of the visitor are trained to the strictest purity. Why should artists and sculptors persist in shocking the finer sensibilities of old and young of both s.e.xes by crowding upon their view representations of naked human forms in att.i.tudes of luxurious abandon? Public taste may demand it. But let those who have the power endeavor to reform public taste.

9. WIDELY DIFFUSED.--Good men have ever lamented the pernicious influence of a depraved and perverted literature. But such literature has never been so systematically and widely diffused as at the present time. This is owing to two causes, its cheapness and the facility of conveyance.

10. INFLAME THE Pa.s.sIONS.--A very large proportion of the works thus put in circulation are of the worst character, tending to corrupt the principles, to inflame the pa.s.sions, to excite impure desire, and spread a blight over all the powers of the soul. Brothels are recruited from this more than any other source. Those who search the trunks of convicted criminals are almost sure to find in them one or more of these works; and few prisoners who can read at all fail to enumerate among the causes which led them into crime the unhealthy stimulus of this depraved and poisonous literature.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

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Startling Sins.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

1. NAMELESS CRIMES.--The nameless crimes identified with the hushed-up Sodomite cases; the revolting condition of the school of Sodomy; the revelations of the Divorce Court concerning the condition of what is called national n.o.bility, and upper cla.s.ses, as well as the unclean spirit which attaches to "society papers," has revealed a condition which is perfectly disgusting.

2. UNFAITHFULNESS.--Unfaithfulness amongst husbands and wives in the upper cla.s.ses is common and adultery rife everywhere; mistresses are kept in all directions; thousands of these rich men have at least two, and not seldom three establishments.

3. A FRIGHTFUL INCREASE.--Facts which have come to light during the past ten years show a frightful increase in every form of licentiousness; the widely extended area over which wh.o.r.edom and degrading l.u.s.t have thrown the glamor of their fascinating toils is simply appalling. {424}

4. MORAL CARNAGE.--We speak against the fearful moral carnage; would to G.o.d that some unmistakable manifestation of the wrath of G.o.d should come in and put a stop to this huge seed-plot of national demoralization! We are reaping in this disgusting centre the harvest of corruption which has come from the toleration and encouragements given by the legislature, the police, and the magistrates to immorality, vice, and sin; the awful fact is, that we are in the midst of the foul and foetid harvest of l.u.s.t. Aided by some of the most exalted personages in the land, a.s.sisted by thousands of educated and wealthy wh.o.r.emongers and adulterers, we are reaping also, in individual physical ugliness and deformity, that which has been sown; the puny, ill-formed and mentally weak youths and maidens, men and women, to be seen in large numbers in our princ.i.p.al towns and cities, represent the widespread nature of the curse which has, in a marked manner, impaired the physique, the morality, and the intelligence of the nation.

5. DAILY PRESS.--The daily press has not had the moral courage to say one word; the quality of demoralizing novels such as have been produced from the impure brain and unclean imaginations; the subtle, clever, and fascinating undermining of the white-winged angel of purity by modern sophists, whose prurient and vicious volumes were written to throw a halo of charm and beauty about the brilliant courtesan and the splendid adulteress; the mixing up of l.u.s.t and love; the making of corrupt pa.s.sion to stand in the garb of a deep, lasting, and holy affection--these are some of the hideous seedlings which, hidden amid the glamor and fascination of the seeming "angel of light," have to so large an extent corrupted the morality of the country.

6. NIGHTLY EXHIBITIONS.--Some of you know what the nightly exhibitions in these garlanded temples of whorish incentive are. There is the variety theatre, with its disgusting ballet dancing, and its shamelessly indecent photographs exhibited in every direction. What a clear gain to morality it would be if the accursed houses were burnt down, and forbidden by law ever to be re-built or re-opened; the whole scene is designed to act upon and stimulate the l.u.s.ts and evil pa.s.sions of corrupt men and women.

7. CONFIDENCE AND EXPOSURE.--I hear some of you say, cannot some influence be brought to bear upon this plague-spot? Will the legislature or congress do nothing? Is the law and moral right to continue to be trodden under foot? Are the magistrates and the police powerless? The truth is the harlots and wh.o.r.emongers are master of the situation; the moral sense of the legislators, the magistrates, and the {425} police is so low that anything like confidence is at present out of the question.

8. THE SISTERHOOD OF SHAME AND DEATH.--It is enough to make angels weep to see a great ma.s.s of America's wealthy and better-cla.s.s sons full of zeal and on fire with interest in the surging hundreds of the sisterhood of shame and death. Many of these men act as if they were--if they do not believe they are--dogs. No poor hunted dog in the streets was ever tracked by a yelping crowd of curs more than is the fresh girl or chance of a maid in the accursed streets of our large cities. Price is no object, nor parentage, nor home; it is the truth to affirm that hundreds and thousands of well-dressed and educated men come in order to the gratification of their l.u.s.ts, and to this end they frequent this whole district; they have reached this stage, they are being burned up in this fire of l.u.s.t; men of whom G.o.d says, "Having eyes full of adultery and that cannot cease sin."

9. LAW MAKERS.--Now should any member of the legislature rise up and testify against this "earthly h.e.l.l," and speak in defence of the moral manhood and womanhood of the nation, he would be greeted as a fanatic, and laughed down amid derisive cheers; such has been the experience again and again. Therefore attack this great stronghold which for the past thirty years has warred and is warring against our social manhood and womanhood, and constantly undermining the moral life of the nation; against this citadel of licentiousness, this metropolitan centre of crime, and vice, and sin, direct your full blast of righteous and manly indignation.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

10. TEMPLES OF l.u.s.t.--Here stand the foul and splendid temples of l.u.s.t, intemperance, and pa.s.sion, into whose vortex tens of thousands of our sons and daughters are constantly being drawn. Let it be remembered that this whole area represents the most costly conditions, and proves beyond question that an enormous proportion of the wealthy manhood of the nation, and we as citizens sustain, partake, and share in this carnival of death.

Is it any wonder that the robust type of G.o.dly manhood which used to be found in the legislature, is sadly wanting now, or that the wretched caricatures of manhood which find form and place in such papers as "Truth"

and the "World" are accepted as representing "modern society?"

11. PURITANIC MANHOOD.--It is a melancholy fact that by reason of uncleanness, we have almost lost regard for the type of puritanic manhood which in the past held aloft the standard of a chaste and holy life; such men in this day are spoken of as "too slow" as "weak-kneed," and {426} "goody-goody" men. Let me recall that word, the fast and indecently-dressed "things," the animals of easy virtue, the "respectable" courtesans that flirt, chaff, gamble, and waltz with well-known high-cla.s.s licentious lepers--such is the ideal of womanhood which a large proportion of our large city society accepts, fawns upon, and favors.

12. SHAMEFUL CONDITIONS.--Perhaps one of the most inhuman and shameful conditions of modern fas.h.i.+onable society, both in England and America, is that which wealthy men and women who are married destroy their own children in the embryo stage of being, and become murderers thereby. This is done to prevent what should be one of our chief glories, viz., large and well-developed home and family life.

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The Prost.i.tution of Men.

CAUSE AND REMEDY.

1. EXPOSED YOUTH.--Generally even in the beginning of the period when s.e.xual uneasiness begins to show itself in the boy, he is exposed in schools, inst.i.tutes, and elsewhere to the temptations of secret vice, which is transmitted from youth to youth, like a contagious corruption, and which in thousands destroys the first germs of virility. Countless numbers of boys are addicted to these vices for years. That they do not in the beginning of nascent p.u.b.erty proceed to s.e.xual intercourse with women, is generally due to youthful timidity, which dares not reveal its desire, or from want of experience for finding opportunities. The desire is there, for the heart is already corrupted.

2. BOYHOOD TIMIDITY OVERCOME.--Too often a common boy's timidity is overcome by chance or by seduction, which is rarely lacking in great cities where prost.i.tution is flouris.h.i.+ng, and thus numbers of boys immediately after the transition period of youth, in accordance with the previous secret practice, accustom themselves to the a.s.sociation with prost.i.tute women, and there young manhood and morals are soon lost forever.

3. MARRIAGE-BED RESOLUTIONS.--Most men of the educated cla.s.ses enter the marriage-bed with the consciousness of leaving behind them a whole army of prost.i.tutes or seduced women, in whose arms they cooled their pa.s.sions and spent the vigor of their youth. But with such a past the married man does not at the same time leave behind him its influence on his inclinations.

The habit of having a feminine being at his disposal for every rising appet.i.te, and the desire for change inordinately indulged for years, generally make themselves felt again as soon as the honeymoon is over.

Marriage will not make a morally corrupt man all at once a good man and a model husband.

4. THE INJUSTICE OF MAN.--Now, although many men are in a certain sense "not worthy to unloose the latchet of the shoes" of the commonest woman, much less to "unfasten her girdle," yet they make the most extravagant demands on the feminine s.e.x. Even the greatest debauchee, who has spent his vigor in the arms of a hundred courtesans, will cry out fraud and treachery if he does not receive his newly married bride as an untouched virgin. Even the most dissolute husband will look on his wife as deserving of death if his daily infidelity is only once reciprocated. {428}

5. UNJUST DEMANDS.--The greater the injustice a husband does to his wife, the less he is willing to submit to from her; the oftener he becomes unfaithful to her, the stricter he is in demanding faithfulness from her.

We see that despotism nowhere denies its own nature: the more a despot deceives and abuses his people, the more submissiveness and faithfulness he demands of them.

6. SUFFERING WOMEN.--Who can be astonished at the many unhappy marriages, if he knows how unworthy most men are of their wives? Their virtues they rarely can appreciate, and their vices they generally call out by their own. Thousands of women suffer from the results of a mode of life of which they, having remained pure in their thought, have no conception whatever; and many an unsuspecting wife nurses her husband with tenderest care in sicknesses which are nothing more than the consequences of his amours with other women.

7. AN INHUMAN CRIMINAL.--When at last, after long years of delusion and endurance, the scales drop from the eyes of the wife, and revenge or despair drives her into a hostile position towards her lord and master, she is an inhuman criminal, and the hue and cry against the fickleness of women and the falsity of their nature is endless. Oh, the injustice of society and the injustice of cruel man. Is there no relief for helpless women that are bound by the ties of marriage to men who are nothing but rotten corruption?

8. VULGAR DESIRE.--The habit of regarding the end and aim of woman only from the most vulgar side--not to respect in her the n.o.ble human being, but to see in her only the instrument of sensual desire--is carried so far among men that they will allow it to force into the background considerations among themselves, which they otherwise pretend to rank very high.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

9. THE ONLY REMEDY.--But when the feeling of women has once been driven to indignation with respect to the position which they occupy, it is to be hoped that they will compel men to be pure before marriage, and they will remain loyal after marriage.

10. WORSE THAN SAVAGES.--With all our civilization we are put to shame even by the savages. The savages know of no fastidiousness of the s.e.xual instinct and of no brothels. We are, indeed, likewise savages, but in quite a different sense. Proof of this is especially furnished by our youth. But that our students, and young men in general, usually pa.s.s through the school of corruption and drag the filth of the road which they have traversed before marriage along {429} with them throughout life, is not their fault so much as the fault of prejudices and of our political and social conditions that prohibits a proper education, and the placing of the right kind of literature on these subjects into the hands of young people.

11. REASON AND REMEDY.--Keep the youth pure by a thorough system of plain unrestricted training. The seeds of immorality are sown in youth, and the secret vice eats out their young manhood often before the age of p.u.b.erty.

They develop a bad character as they grow older. Young girls are ruined, and licentiousness and prost.i.tution flourish. Keep the boys pure and the harlot would soon lose her vocation. Elevate the morals of the boys, and you will have pure men and moral husbands.