Book Description

We all of us enjoy a story of battle and adventure. Some of us delight in the anxiety andexcitement with which we watch the various strange predicaments, hairbreadth escapes, and ingenious contrivances that are presented to us; and the mere imaginary dread of thedangers thus depicted, stirs our feelings and makes us feel eager and full of suspense.This taste, though it is the first step above the dullness that cannot be interested inanything beyond its own immediate world, nor care for what it neither sees, touches, tastes, nor puts to any present use, is still the lowest form that such a liking can take. It maybe no better than a love of reading about murders in the newspaper, just for the sake of asort of startled sensation; and it is a taste that becomes unwholesome when it absolutelydelights in dwelling on horrors and cruelties for their own sake; or upon shifty, cunning, dishonest stratagems and devices. To learn to take interest in what is evil is alwaysmischievo