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"One who did not know your horror of novels, mama, might suspect you of feeding your imagination upon 'penny dreadfuls. I'm sure he is only a cowboy, and won't harm anybody." "Cowboys are as bad as highwaymen," contended her mother, "or worse. I have read how they shoot men for a pastime, and without even the excuse of robbery." "Is it possible?" quavered Miss Hayes faintly. "No, it isn't!"
Master Love meanwhile had very little time for his "penny dreadfuls," and complained bitterly of his hardships. And indeed he looked so pale and unhealthy that Reginald began to fear the constant "licking" was undermining his constitution, and ordered him to use a sponge instead of his tongue. But on this point Love's loyalty made a stand. Nothing would induce him to use the artificial expedient.
The penny dreadfuls which I also read were indeed in a healthy and heroic tradition of Christianity; but I did not know this at the time. I never read a line of Christian apologetics. I read as little as I can of them now. It was Huxley and Herbert Spencer and Bradlaugh who brought me back to orthodox theology. They sowed in my mind my first wild doubts of doubt.
Kipling brought a new violence and wonder, a sort of debased Byronism, into the imagination of youth; at least, he put a crown upon the violence and wonder which youth had long previously discovered for itself in penny dreadfuls and in its rebellion against conventions and orthodoxies. It may be protested, however, that this is an incomplete account of Mr. Kipling's genius as a poet.
Perdue, as I said, dropped away from the Hasheesh Club, lost his employment as literary editor of the Luminary, fell out of good society, and at last earned barely enough to keep him and his wife and his child in bread, and to supply himself with whisky, by writing sensation stories for the "penny dreadfuls."
We spent our rare pennies in the uncensored reading matter of the village dame's shop, on the Boys of England, and honest penny dreadfuls ripping stuff, stuff that anticipated Haggard and Stevenson, badly printed and queerly illustrated, and very very good for us.
To prevent these dreadfuls, and render man the noble creature for which he is designed, happy in himself, an honor to his Creator, and a blessing among God's works, are the ends proposed in education. These usually originate in that culture which is begun by parents. The foundation of honor or infamy, usefulness or mischief, happiness or misery, is commonly laid in the morning of life.
For days he scarcely spoke a word. The silence of that office was unearthly. He opened the window, winter as it was, to let in the sound of cabs and footsteps for company. He missed even the familiar rustle of the "penny dreadfuls" as the boy turned their pages. He wished anybody, even his direst foe, might turn up to save him from dying of loneliness.
That foolish jargon, picked up from comic papers and the penny dreadfuls, convince more firmly than any written proof the products of the mission schools, whose one ambition was to be American themselves, and whose one pathetic peak of humor was the occasional glimpse of United States slang dropped for their edification by missionary teachers! "By jimminy!" remarked an Armenian near me.
The penny dreadfuls which I also read were indeed in a healthy and heroic tradition of Christianity; but I did not know this at the time. I never read a line of Christian apologetics. I read as little as I can of them now. It was Huxley and Herbert Spencer and Bradlaugh who brought me back to orthodox theology. They sowed in my mind my first wild doubts of doubt.
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