My neighbour ran in at the basement door as was his wont. Coming lightly up the stairs he entered the library, and not finding me there, but hearing a voice beyond, he walked across the room and looked in at the open doorway of my den, where he stood for a moment, unobserved.

This is what he saw:

The boy, then scarcely nine, stretched out comfortably on a sofa, reading aloud; I reclining in an easy-chair with my slippered feet in another, and listening intently; a bright light shining over the boy’s shoulder and flooding the room.

My neighbour paused long enough to hear these words fall from the reader’s lips in boyish monotone:

“The crack of a Winchester sounded on the night air and the engineer fell dead!”

Then he interrupted.

“Well, in the name of reason,” he said, “what are you folks reading?”

The boy and I looked up. I took the book from the youngster’s hand and passed it up to the intruder.

“The life and adventures of Jesse James,” I said.

My neighbour took the book gingerly, read the title and glanced at the cover, upon which were pictured in vivid colours three desperate-looking gentlemen in black masks, holding up a train.

“And you are reading this—together?” he asked.

“Yes,” said I; “taking turns at it, he a chapter and I a chapter.”

My neighbour shrugged his shoulders and returned the volume, dusting his fingers.

“Don’t you think he would get to this sort of stuff soon enough—without you helping him?”

“He arrived there to-day,” I said; “and I’m there with him.”

There you have it—the great difference of viewpoint: my neighbour looking at it from where he stands and I looking at it from the standpoint of my boy. My neighbour convinced that I was starting my beloved son on the highroad to a criminal career; I calm and confident, and cocksure that I am doing what is best for the boy. And I guess if we were to take the vote of Parenthood on the issue, my side would go down to overwhelming defeat.

Now, my father says that up to the time he departed from the parental roof there were only two books in the home that he was permitted to read—the Bible and Foxe’s “Martyrs.” From his tenth to his seventeenth year he was actually starving, he said, for the want of stories of adventure. Once, when he was fourteen, a departing visitor left a copy of “Scottish Chiefs.” This he seized upon and was devouring it in the attic when discovery by his stern pater cut him off in the middle of a most exciting battle. The book was confiscated and he was soundly chastised. “And do you know,” adds my father ruefully, “it was three years before I learned how that fight came out!”

Perhaps that’s why he gave me a freer hand in my selections when I was a kid. He did, anyway. All that he required was that it must be free from any suggestion of the obscene and of sacrilege. Like most boys I began my independent reading with “Grimm’s Fairy Tales,” “Robinson Crusoe,” “Swiss Family Robinson,” “Arabian Nights” and books of the sort that boys usually receive as gifts. From these I jumped to the nickel and dime variety. There were one or two good juvenile magazines coming into the home, but they were not sufficient. I waded through all the “Smart Aleck” books, including “Peck’s Bad Boy.” I took the thrills with the ten-cent detective heroes of the Old Sleuth and Nick Carter type, and revelled in the more or less historical exploits of David Crockett, Kit Carson, Daniel Boone and Buffalo Bill.

At fourteen I had run the gamut of cheap literature. I do not mean that I read every “penny-dreadful” in existence, for the list is endless—there is a new one every day. But I had “got my skin full” and the stuff began to pall. After reading a good number of these books, even a boy feels their want of the convincing quality. He feels, too, their sameness and their unrealness.

Then I approached the modern style and the truer type of boy books, stories of the Alger, Oliver Optic and G. A. Henty kind; and then the better type of adventure stories, such as “Treasure Island” and “King Solomon’s Mines.” Then I drifted into Wilkie Collins’ creations, reading only the more exciting ones—“The Moonstone” and “The Dead Alive.” After that came Edgar Allan Poe and Charles Reade; and before I was sixteen I had got into Scott, Thackeray and Dickens. And here I anchored. Since then, of course, I have voyaged far and wide in all directions, but Dickens is my snug harbour, and will be to the end. No boy could revel—shall I say wallow?—in trashy literature more than I did; but search as I will, I cannot see where it left a trace of an influence on my conduct or my character. I do not think it was owing to any want of physical courage; because I know that I did my share of fighting and took as many beatings with a dry eye as the others; a little more of both, in fact, than it would become me to boast about. But I never robbed a bank or had any desire to; I never craved the career of a detective keenly enough to try my hand at it, and while at one time I did yearn for a chance to battle single-handed with a band of Sioux warriors, the desire never led me into more dangerous quarters than a seat at the Wild West Show. Was I different from other boys? My mother says certainly I was, and very much better. God bless her! My father says I was about like the rest. My teacher—he is a prominent member of the New York bar now, and I put the question to him squarely just the other day—tells me frankly that I was the worst boy in school. The three estimates, averaged, would make me an average boy, and I think my experience as to the effect of reading material was about the usual experience of boys in general.

They pass through the age of blood-and-thunder literature just as they have mumps, measles and marbles, and are none the better and but little the worse for having gone through it. As water finds its level, so the temperament eventually finds its affinity in reading matter.

“There is no book so bad,” said the elder Pliny, “but that some good might be got out of it.”

I know that some boys who read cheap literature go to the bad. But I have never seen it established that the reading was responsible for the waywardness. I do not deny that, granting the existence of a tendency toward a life of crime, certain types of stories might encourage the tendency. But the influence of this stuff is so slight that the avoidance of it would not prevent the downward step.

Many a boy, fascinated by the glamour of the circus, has run away with one. Still, this does not make the circus reprehensible nor would I, because of that circumstance, deny my boy the pleasure of attending it. On the contrary, I go with him to the circus and sit beside him. We munch peanuts joyously, but I warn him to beware of the red lemonade and tell him why it is sometimes unwholesome. He sees the show from start to finish—under my direction. And when he has seen it I reveal to him the reverse side of the picture—I give him a peep behind the scenes. I tell him of the hardships and privations of a showman’s life, the long night rides, the harsh discipline, the perils and dangers of it.

This is exactly my attitude toward the boy’s early reading. I do not throw wide open the doors of the paper-cover library and push him into it. But if he shows a desire to explore it, I go with him. Wherever I can save him time and eyestrain by a friendly suggestion, I am there to make it. When I find him reading “Cut-Throat Charley, the Terror of the Spanish Main,” I do not pooh-pooh the book or make sport of the boy. I do tell him that the best pirate story ever written is Stevenson’s “Treasure Island” and tell him that if he wants a shipwreck story that will make his hair stand up he ought to read Poe’s “Arthur Gordon Pym” or Reade’s “Foul Play.” Once he has read either of these, you may depend upon it that “Cut-Throat Charley” will never ring true.

When he takes up Mr. Nicholas Carter I suggest “The Mystery of the Rue Morgue,” “Les MisÉrables” and “Sherlock Holmes,” and other detective stories of the better class.

My boy had been learning from other boys something of the exploits of Jesse James and asked me if I would get the book. I agreed to it, readily. Somewhat to my surprise I found that since my time the list of James books had been increased to thirty-six. Thirty-five of these were “pot-boilers”; “Jesse James’ Nemesis,” “Jesse James’ Revenge,” “Jesse James’ Long Chance,” “Jesse James’ Mistake,” and so on. I passed these over, of course, and invested fifteen cents in “The James Boys, Jesse and Frank,” which was the book I had read when I was a youngster. It was a plain record of the men’s exploits, compiled from newspaper clippings of that period. I explained to the boy that the others were largely imaginative—unreal. We read the book together. Then we read the story of Cole Younger and his brothers and later that of the criminal career of Harry Tracy, the infamous outlaw of the Northwest. Together we enjoyed the romance, such as there was, of their exploits; together we discussed the animal courage and moral cowardice of their careers; and together we followed them to the punishment which they so richly deserved.

Had my boy evinced a desire to read the remaining thirty-five James books, I would not have restrained him, farther than to suggest a change. It so happened that when he had finished the three books mentioned he had had enough of these distinguished gentlemen and their ilk, and began casting about in other directions.

So my message on the reading subject is, don’t think that the boy’s craving for the nickel library is an indication of depravity, or that indulgence in it will start him on the road to perdition. The appetite for these books is a normal one. It develops at a time when his appreciation of romance is in full bloom but while big words, subtle phrasing and genuine ingenuity are not yet within his comprehension. It demands quick action and quick results, stripped of the artistic setting and higher polish which are demanded by the refinement of matured intellect.

Do not regard this kind of reading as a menace to the boy’s morals, but as a stepping-stone to something better and more beneficial. Do not, either by rule or ridicule, drive the boy from his home to seek it, but stay with him and guide him through it. Keep him well supplied with good books and good magazines that approach, as nearly as you can judge, the requirement of his fancy. Watch him, but do not worry him. Have the better things at hand and accessible and point the way to them. Rest assured that in due time Cut-Throat Charley will have lost his charm, and a hero more worthy of emulation will stand in his shoes.