THE "BOOK FIEND."

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 1 April 1920, Page 3

THE "BOOK FIEND."

(Hokianga Times)

Of the various ways of earning what is frequently termed "an honest crust," that of the book fiend is the most arduous and at the same time most execrable. The man (or woman) who will set out to make a living wage by commission on the sale of a book that anyone with an intellect above that of the long-eared gentleman would know to be rubbish, must either be very hard pushed for a job or have wonderfiff faith in the power of their own eloquence and the credulity of the general public. However, as "Hope springs eternal in the human breast," the book fiend probably argues that as the public have for years past been periodically induced to pay big prices for volumes of rubbish, they can be induced to do so again. " We don't know where the first book fiend hailed from or had his i>eing, but probably it was America—anyhow, no self-respecting country will dispute the honour. The racecourse habitue who lives by his wits, and known as a "head" or a " guesser" according to the capacity of his wits to thieve largely or pettily is always borne up in times of depression with the motto "A fresh crop of mugs is born every day." The same motto should be a depressed spirit salve to the book fiend. There is always some doting mother who thinks that with a " Home Doctor " in the house she can prevent baby's pinny pain from developing into acute bronchitis, or some hypochondriacal gentleman who takes a gloomy delight in reading the symptoms of every disease that flesh is heir to and discovering that he has them all. These are the easy prey of the medical-book fiend. The reli-gious-book fiend has a wider scope, and a more plentiful choice of easy victims. It is truly astonishing how many people (particularly females) whose religion takes the form of an association with something scriptural. They look upon placing a religious book, however nonsensical, upon their book shelves as a step nearer to heaven, as an infinitely better insurance against hereafter fire than doing a good action. A gentleman canvassed this district recently for a work (sic) entitled "The Desire of Ages." We had not the pleasure of being personally canvassed, and therefore do not know what arguments the canvasser used in inducing people to buy, but a glance inside the thoroughly respectable looking covers of the volume gave us a very good idea of what the patter would be. A picture of Christ in a mu|titudinous variety of actions adorns every third or fourth page, and pictures of holy places and holy people are sandwiched in between, and no doubt the " blessed word ' Mesopotamia ' " occurs in the accompanying letter press many times. To your sentimental religionist the picture of Christ, whether it be badly drawn, badly coloured or badly reproduced, is sacred, and to criticise it is sarcilege. Therefore the book fiend with plenty of Christly illustrations to work upon has only to pick his victim and his book is above criticism. If the victim cannot criticise then he or she must praise (what religious sentimentalist would dream of anything but praise for a book adorned with pictures of Jesus and texts from the New Testament ?) If the prospective victim wavers the children argument is trotted out. What better education for the child than, of a winter's evening or a rainy day, to show it pictures of Christ raising the dead, ascending to heaven, hanging on the cross or weeping in the garden of Gethsemane ? What's a guinea when the soul of your little boy is at stake ? These and similar arguments are used to induce foolish people to buy a foolish and utterly worthless book, and it is a very sad commentary on our 2000 or so years of Christian civilisation to have to admit that they, so frequently succeed. Fortunately this class of book does not do much harm beyond taking the purchase price out of the purchaser's pocket, because they are so uninteresting that once on the book shelf the only thing that ever disturbs them is the duster. Of the men behind the gun, the publishers and alleged authors who concoct and produce these literary monstrosities, it is a mute question who is the greater rogue—the one who trades upon the,physical infirmities of humanity or the one who waxes fat upon the shallowness of human spiritual mentality. As the former is capable of being seriously experimented with to the detriment of the body and the latter cannot seriously affect a spiritual mentality that is already deficient, the position of arch criminal ntust be given to the creators of the " Doctor in the Home" class of literature.