WHO READS STORIES? UNKNOWN WORLD.

Waikato Times, Volume XXV, Issue 2048, 22 August 1885, Page 2 (Supplement)

WHO READS STORIES? UNKNOWN WORLD.

The Strenk of Rsntiranit that Sofsena oil Humanity— Growing Young by Reading About Young People.

It ii a mistake to suppose that the majority of men and women do not care to read stories'. There is a streak of sentiment in almost every heart, and it feeds* upon Motion. Often the fare is poor and meagre ; but it is hungrily consumed, even if it does not satisfy. The cardiac requirements of human bsings demand something that deals with the atfactions. It is not only the young and romantic who turn to the three-column story in tho daily or weekly newspapers for emotional pleasure. The most withered lawyer or cashburdened banter, whofio heart— his neighbors think — turned to parohment years ago, goes through the lifctln romance, entitled " Jasper's Legacy" or "Margery'B Vow," with a zest that wonld astonish his friends and his family if they only know it. But they don't know it. He takes it for granted that th<7 think ho ought to be through with such nonsense, and so reads tba story on the sly, when he is alone— at night, perhaps, when everybody else is asleep, or on his little trips in the cars, or in his office when business languishes. And while he reads he maintains an expression of face indicative of thought on intiicate questions of jurisprudence or finance. Ho wouldn't be caught smiling tenderly over the story for any. thing. Ho is as sheepish about this little green and beautiful spot in his well scorched soul as a schoolboy caught writing his first love sonnet. It is the one sweet evidenoe of the God within him which Mammon has not vanquished; but he is ashamed of it, and deals with it as * weakness. Still, he reads the story — roads it and envoys it. though it be as commonplace in plot as a primer dog story. It has, of course, a horo and a heroine, a man and woman hopelessly wounded by Cupid's arrows — who find the conrsc for their love obstructed by all sorts of troubles. Somehow the pent-up sentiment of the banker's nature cxponds itself in sympathy with their woes. To all the world ho is self-contained, unemotional and severely practical. To the hero and heroine of the story he is ns sympathetic as a school girl. lie woep3 with them and langhs with them ; and when all their early sorrows arc past, the Villain vanquished, "the crncl father's selfish plans thwarted, and the snileiing lovers safe in tho matrimonial harbor, he breathes a sigh of satisfaction, nnd over his finance-worn face flit. 1 ? an old, old smile which nothing else under the sun could call into life. His business partner thinks the smile has its origin in some ftivorable fluctuation of the stock maiket. His wife, if she sees it. thinks he has found an exceptionally satirical paragraph about women — a style of literature for which he professes great admiration ; .and his enemy, if he could see him, would be certain that he had hit upon a new means of worrying him. We are all immeasurably less fiendish than we are supposed to be. Who would dream — oh. short-sighted, blundering souls — who would dream that that look of tenderness on the banking house countenance was born of a love story ? Yet, mark you, if similar heroes and heroines wonld rise up in the flesh and defy the social proprieties or parental wrath for love's sake, the banker would condemn them without mercy. He would judge them solely from an oxtenor standpoint. He would be totally unmoved by any sentimental c«nsiderations, because he would not bo made acquainted with their emotional sufferings as in [ tho case of the lovers of the story. That is often why we are all so cold-hearted to real sufferers, and so sympathetic to the stage and book people. The banker's wife also reads the story — reads it and sighs. She has a. well-defined idea that the prospective happiness of the bride may prove somewhat ephemereal, and that thought calls out the sigh. Still her heart is a little younger and a little warmer because of the story. It has linked her for a brief moment with the vanished dreams of the past. Gome of the happiness which might have been, ought to have been, and yet was not, colors her mind with the rose tint of youth, even while her eyes grow dim. And the young people ! No one doubts that they read stories— those f hat end well and those that leave their chief characters with a heartache as big as a barrel. If they were to speak frankly they would most likely say they liked the latter better. '• Heartaches," " secret sorrows," "quenchless griefs," these are precious possessions to imaginative youth, lifting them head, shoulders, and body above " the common herd," in their own fond fancy. Yes, the young people read the stories.read them and live them. Sometimes they resolutely shape their lives after their favorite characters, or try to so far as the heroic, lofty, and sometimes the gloomy, as they understand fhetn, go. Gloom is a quality often very much overrated by the very young. In their lack of sophistication, they fancy it makes them attractive, when it really makes them ridiculous. Sometimes the young and imaginative dwell with the people of Authorland almost to the point of being oblivious to the less interesting flesh and blood creatures around them. This, though considered extremely impractical and highly unremumorative, is after all evidence of a longing for something better. The book people who win their regard are real people, with, their defects blotted out and their good qualities brought into plain sight by the author's subtle art. To love them and long for people like them is an aspiration. They are a little higher than mortals, though still considerably lower than the angels. , The boundless realm of fiction is the land to which we can all flee and find rest and pleasure when the world of reality grows unbearable. * It is the land of the ideal, and its printed gates are always ajar. It is but a moment's journey from the wearying earth to the top of its highest mountain peak. On its broad and bountiful highways we breathe the air of our dreams. In its palaces we sup with kings ; in its lowly homes we meet the gentle and the faithful ; and everywhere within we can hold counsel with the great. Who would put his friends of fiction out of his mind if ho could 1 Who would weed these deathless poor and immortal great out of the garden of his memory, leaving there only his fiesh-and-blood friends ? How cheerless the world would become if we shut the doors of Storyland and refused to open them. Many a woman living in some crude, sparsely settled community, lonely and working like a slave, knowing no joys but the plainest and homeliest, gets her only glimpse of something beautiful through the stones that float to her in tho newspapers. These and the scraps of poetry picked up fiom the same source keep her heart fiom witheiine;. They reassure her that somewhere in the same world with herself, though hhe may never see them, are men and women who flunk arid write about such sweet, lost things as love and beauty, tenderness and truth. The people of Storyland (hat she loams to love arc actuated by nobler impul^o. than most of the real people that sun ound hci, and so they become the props which keep her fiom sinking in dull debprui. If sho has feiendf? th it eho can share these treasures with she doen bo, and ''o enhanoas her own enjoyment of them. Perhaps she knows other women as linncly and loveless as herself : and if they can understand what she

has found so pleasant, she londa her stories and talks them over v/fth the bo/rovers. Women, unlike inrn, arc not asbainei of sentiment Rltcr they are through the irguifltiou l«vc ruaHnp f^xperiencea, a^darems.-iisd ami " rettled." Th;s prccc&s of ' pcttlim;" ia generally fatal to tho " fine feelmgs" of uopoljohed men. They may havr n httle fondness for rominc > left witLm thorn, bat thsy thiak it %w.-<e to affect to be without it. Tho plainest, most practical countryman rend storiep, though he never speaks of fhem. But ho thinks about them, and their peoplo bocomo his neople. Thoy have widened his world ; they nave given him new thought ; thoy take him out of himself and into their own enchanted country, from which he returns with a eigh. The old and the young, tho sad and the merry, the hopefnl and the despairing, the idle and the industrious, the rich and the poor all read stories, and all ftnd solace in them and sympathy. . We are all really more creafcuraa of imagination than reality. We live mora in thought of the morrow than in thought of to-day. Even the most uncompromising realist has an imagination, narrowed, cramped and unlovely though it be, and thither he betakes himself a thousand times a day, Even the planning of the poorest, meanest of life's duties demands some of this divine quality. One can furnish one's imagination with interests sticking dose to earth, or fill it with heroes and locate it on Fancy's grandest? mountain. I once know a man 85 years old, who had boon out of the active contest of life many years, lived secluded, seeing but few friends, yet was yonng and happy in spirit. His chief ocsupation was novel loading. 11)9 library table groaned with woiks of fiction, and many hours of the days and nights did he sit boside it reading, laughing, sometimes weeping, but always enjoying. " I read stories because I like them," ho s&id. " They keep me young. The more I read the younger I fetal. Perhaps if I keep on I'll renew my youth, and never die." he added, playfully. Tot he may have uttered a gicater truth than he was aware of. The book atmosphere that he dwelt in waa largely impregnated with the thonghts, tke hopes, the loves aud adventures of youth. When he entered it old age fell away from his mind, though it still clung to hi 9 body. His spirit wos made young by absorbing the thoughts of the young,Jand being for the time one of them in sympathy. Ghrtkude Garrison. In the Ilaiokcye.