They are compiled either by literary hacks, enfeebled clergymen, or women of limited intelligence, and they are artfully designed to ensnare the fancy of the simple-minded, the credulous, and the good. I have noticed that those which are plentifully supplied with texts from Holy Writ command the largest sale, provided, of course, the texts are printed in italics.
I believe that books of this description belong to what is known technically as the “awakening” class--that is to say, they are supposed to awaken a young man to a sense of his own spiritual degradation. I cannot answer for their effect on very young men, but I do know that they awaken nothing in my heart but feelings of uproarious hilarity; for I well remember how the merry Bohemians who enriched the literature of the _Ledger_ age with their contributions turned many an honest dollar by means of these admonitory letters, and not one of these priceless essays but contained its solemn preachment on the advantages to be derived from the companionship of good, pure women. But never a word was uttered in regard to the bad influence of good women.
Indeed, I can fancy nothing that would have been less in harmony with a literary spirit which denied recognition to stepmothers, fast horses, and amatory cousins than a vivid bit of realism of that sort; and as for the succeeding age, was not the good Dr. Holland himself the author of the famous _Timothy Titcomb Papers_? It is even too bald a bit of truth for the more enlightened Johnsonian period in which we live. Nevertheless the recording angel has a heavy score rolled up against the sex which it was once the chivalrous fashion to liken to the clinging vine, but which, as some of us know, can clutch as well as cling--a sex which continues to distil the most deadly and enervating of intoxicants, the flattery of tongue and eye, by the same process that was known to Delilah and to Helen of Troy.
But although the latter-day process of distillation is undoubtedly the same that was employed in centuries long gone by the effects of the poison are by no means the same now that they were then. In the Homeric age it sent a man forth to do valiant if unnecessary deeds; but in the present era it slowly but surely robs the young writer of his originality, undermines his reputation, nips all healthy ambition in the bud, and leaves him a stranded wreck of whom men say contemptuously as they pass by: “Bad case of the Swelled Head.” It may happen that some more thoughtful of the passers-by will have the grace to put the blame where it belongs by adding: “That young fellow was doing very well two years ago, and we all thought he was going to amount to something; but he fell in with a lot of silly women who flattered him and told him he was the greatest writer in the world. They swelled his head so that he could not write at all, and now he’s of no use to himself or any one else.”