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He was, so to say, a glorified schoolboy, surfeited with penny dreadfuls. He loved above all things to patter the flash, to dream himself another Macheath, to trick himself out with all the trappings of a crime he was unfit to commit. It was never the job itself that attracted him: he would always rather throw the dice than force a neighbour's window.
I should hope that the boys of England have sufficient brains to care for something a little above the penny dreadfuls, otherwise it is a bad look out for the future men of England. Independently of libraries you can now get books, by good writers, as cheap as sixpence Walter Scott, Fennimore Cooper, Maryatt, Dickens, &c. A word about books.
But the average man or boy writes daily in these great gaudy diaries of his soul, which we call Penny Dreadfuls, a plainer and better gospel than any of those iridescent ethical paradoxes that the fashionable change as often as their bonnets.
A sincere novel exhibits the simplicity of one particular man; an insincere novel exhibits the simplicity of mankind. The pedantic decisions and definable readjustments of man may be found in scrolls and statute books and scriptures; but men's basic assumptions and everlasting energies are to be found in penny dreadfuls and halfpenny novelettes.
Once a generous boy, since dead-he was too good to live had given him a handful of penny dreadfuls, whence he had derived his knowledge of pirates and Red Indians. Too careless and confident, he had left them about the kitchen, and his indignant mother had used them to light the fire. The burning of his library was an enduring tragedy. He realized that it must be reconstituted; but how?
Mitchell looked uncomfortable, and it was not until Miller repeated his question that he spoke. "I believe Spencer persuaded Miss Whitney to meet him clandestinely that night, and threatened to compromise her if she refused again to marry him." "Oh, come!" Miller spoke more roughly than he realized. "Wake up, Mitchell; you've been reading penny dreadfuls.
Then they sit in a chair and read penny dreadfuls, till they are roused from the tragedy of literature to take their place again in the tragedy of art. A few of them smoke cigarettes. This, however, is regarded by the other models as showing a want of seriousness, and is not generally approved of. They are engaged by the day and by the half-day.
An undiluted course of this pernicious literature naturally created in him a desire towards the opposite extreme. He suddenly dropped The Young Christian and The Weekly Rambler, and purchased penny dreadfuls; and taking no further interest in the welfare of the heathen, saved up and bought a second-hand revolver and a hundred cartridges.
Simon's education consisted of the knowledge conveyed in seaport schools for the sons of tradesmen, while a long course of penny dreadfuls had given him a peculiar and extensive acquaintance with the ways of the world. Carefully curtained away in a secret compartment, lay his elementary Hebrew lore. It did not enter into his conception of the perfect Englishman.
For my youth was nursed upon the "penny dreadfuls" of an age that knew not "Chums," nor the "Boys' Own Paper." They were not so very dreadful, those "penny dreadfuls," though dreadfully disrespectful to schoolmasters, who were wont to rend them in pieces in revenge.
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