Those books portray just such men and women as you see
before you, and that is why they are welcomed so warmly. A few cents
will buy from that boy enough folly and impurity to gorge a human mind
for a week, and possibly few among this throng often taste more
wholesome intellectual food.
It is probable that some of these persons are the children of
intelligent and well-bred parents; but their fathers were engrossed in
business, and their mothers in family cares, and thought they had no
time to form the moral and intellectual tastes of the immortal minds
committed to their charge. They fancied that if they sent their children
to good schools, and provided liberally for all their external wants,
they had done enough. Ignorant nursery maids, perhaps, taught them
morals and manners, while the father toiled to accumulate the means for
supplying their external wants, and the mother hemmed ruffles and
scolloped trimming to make people say, "How _sweetly_ those children are
dressed!" as the maid paraded them through the streets, teaching them
their first lessons in vulgar vanity.
A child may be educated at the best schools without acquiring any taste
for good literature. The way a parent treats a child in relation to its
books has far more influence in this respect than a teacher can possibly
possess. A mother, even if she is not an educated woman, can learn to
read understandingly, and can teach her child to read in the same way.
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