Show THE v 1 N physicians are jamillah Ja millar with a complaint which although sufficiently specific has yeti yet no 0 name of its own the patient suffers from an alarming and morbid thirst and consumes a perfectly fabulous amount of fluid almost elways always of an unwholesome nature tea in a highly diluted shape eau acre rasber ry vinegar and water soda sods water or some other such abominable mess mesa is taken by the gallon and the unnatural craving is stimulated by indulgence crescio Cres cit eit Indulge indulgent ns sibl dims dias nee 11 wholesome food is refused no exer enelse is ls taken and und the patient finally sinks into a flabby and sickly condition which nothing but severe and determined ter mined treatment will shake off this habit of body finds its ex exact act analogue in the species of mental dropsy which is produced by ovan ovar indulgence in three novels this terrible complaint is one of the worst evils which modern civilization has brought with it 11 its progress is gradual very insidious and ottea often almost imperceptible at first all that is noticed is that the sufferer is apt to be found bent over a novel at unnatural iio ilo hours as say in the early morning or in IU the middle of a beautiful summers afternoon soon however the disease becomes more pronounced and in its worst stage novels arigot are god got through at av the rate of three or four or even nive five a week or at i an average in a severe and chronic ca case cabe ie of some two hundred and fifty or th three rie ree hundred a year at first some discrimination is exercised and one gritl writer er is perhaps preferred to an ah other mr say to mrs ross boss church orO or ono ouida to the autho guy lvingston hv Ii ingston ivingston very soon however the taste becomes deadened and blunted and all pow erlof erpf distinction and appreciation is lost in in this stage the unhappy patient can no more go without her novel than can a confirmed dipsomaniac without his bis dram the smaller circulating libraries which lend out very second hand novels indeed at a penny a volume are put under contribution and any amount of garbage is swallowed wholesale quality is held absolutely of no importance and quantity is everything the h very vary r process of reading becomes more or less mechanical an and d seems to afford a species of mechanical ch anical pleasure or satisfaction a novel of the feeblest possible type ge being ing read as religiously from cover to cover al and id yielding ap apparently parent ly as much enjoyment enid ellid joy ment as if it were a second romola romols it is no common thin thing for a young lady in whom the om complaint plaint nas assumed a chronic form to have read the whole of scott the whole of Thackeray the whole of annie annle thomas the whole of mrs ross boss church the W hole whole of mrs braddon the whole of lawrence and into the bargain sonae some four tour or fave five hundred novels by less famous hands bands when the disease is thus confirmed the drop arop habit of mind becomes apparent the conversation of the patient becomes flabby and limp IMP her interest in all ordinary y subjects except perhaps the latest fashions or the more scandalous portions of evidence in the case or the marriage of the princess beatrice fl ickers feebly in the socket and finally dies die sout out tho last stage that of absolute imbecility is now unless very powerful remedies are exhibited a mere matter of time it is too clear unfortunately why itis that so many women thus waste their time and rot their minds they read reba novels 1 exactly as some young men raen smoke and drink bitter beer for sheer want of or something to do what a woman needs la Is an application which shall enable her to read and follow the parliamentary debates instead of the police and divorce reports and when women are thus educated then feeble novels and feeble novelists will vex ves our souls no longer to the horrible extent to which they irritate us at present of such an education we may say that it is not to be got in books unless indeed books can give sound healthy common sense and wholesome interest on common subjects but men can give rive it by making the women of their fa milles families their companions and that they should neglect to give it shows chows after all how inveterately deep seated is the tho extraordinary notion that the intellectual difference between men and women is ohe one one of kind and not of desree degree de ree nee ev ex |