EDITH.

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Original.

LIGHT READING.

During a recent tour in search of health and pleasure, I was surprised and pained at seeing the amount of light reading indulged in while traveling, by old and young of both sexes and all classes.  I observed, while rapidly urged over our railways, many thus engaged—­many purchasing eagerly the trash offered at every station, and could but regret they had not provided with the same care food for the mind, by placing in the satchel that contained sustenance for the body, some valuable book, some truthful work.

Lake George, with its clear waters and lovely islands, its majestic, untrod mountains and historical associations, had not attractions sufficient to win the lovers of fiction from the false pages of life, to the open, beautiful book of Nature.  It was a bright July morning when I stood upon the deck of the “John Jay.”

  “The beautiful sun arose—­and there was not
  A stain upon the sky, the virgin blue
  Was delicate as light, and birds went up
  And sang invisibly, the heavenly air
  Wooed them so temptingly.”

Now the mountain-tops were radiant with the golden light, now valley, lake, and green islet, rejoiced in the morning sun.  Yet, at such an hour, amid such scenes, ladies and gentlemen were engrossed with the mawkish sentimentalities of fictitious narrations, their eyes closed to all the beauty of the time and place, their ears deaf to the delicious harmony of awakening nature.

Lake Champlain, with its romantic ruins ever dear to the heart of an American, its verdant shores and rural villages, nestling in the valleys or crowning the hills, could scarce obtain a passing glance from those enraptured with the improbable if not impossible pictures of life.

When upon the St. Lawrence, gliding swiftly through the charming scenery of the Thousand Isles, that like emerald gems adorn the bosom of that noble river, now passing one with cultivated fields and quiet farm-house, another low and level bathed in the rays of a setting sun, others rocky and precipitous, crowned with cedar and fir; again a little quiet spot where one would like long to tarry, or one with shrubbery and light-house so peaceful in its rural beauty you almost envied the occupants their retirement; even here, as I turned from the scene at the whispered exclamation of a friend, “O, how beautiful!” my eye fell upon two ladies bending over the pages of newly issued novels, their countenances glowing—­not with holy emotions awakened by the enjoyment of a summer’s sun-set upon the St. Lawrence, but with feverish excitement, kindled by the overwrought pictures of the novelist.  Fair, young girls, how could you linger over the unreal when passing through such scenes of God’s own work?  How could you shut out that gorgeous sunset, turn from all the pure and heavenly feelings such scenes must awaken, to sympathize with imaginary beings and descriptions?