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If time is precious, no book that will not improve by repeated readings deserves to be read at all.-CARLYLE

God be thanked for books. They are the voices of the distant and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages. Books are the true levelers. They give to all, who will faithfully use them, the society, the spiritual presence, of the best and the greatest of our race. No matter how poor I am, no matter though the prosperous of my own time will not enter my obscure dwelling. If the sacred writers will enter and take up their abode under my roof, if Milton will cross my threshhold to sing to me of Paradise, and Shakespeare to open to me the worlds of imagination and the workings of the human heart, and Franklin to enrich me with his practical wisdom, I shall not pine for want of intellectual companionship, and I may become a cultivated man though excluded from what is called the best society, in the place where I live. CHANNING

if you read ten pages of a good book, letter by letter,that is to say with real accuracy,-you are for evermore in some measure an educated person. The entire difference between education and non-education (as regards the merely intellectual part of it) consists in this accuracy.-RUSKIN

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Pleasure

A store of facts and ideas
An equipment of truths and
ideals

Gain in ability to think

Gain in ability to appreciate
Gain in ability to express

Loss of time and energy

Impairment of memory
Impairment of ability to think
Impairment of character

Keep good company.
Read a book a month.

Vary your reading.

Read aloud.

Keep a record.

Own a few books.

QUESTIONS

1 What is your favorite kind of literature? What is the most interesting book you have ever read? What book have you been reading recently? Can you name a book from which you have surely received permanent benefit? Can you think of a book from which one might receive injury?

2 If you were about to be cast away on an island from which there was no prospect of return for ten years, what five books would you wish to take with you? If a benefactor were to offer to supply to each pupil in school five books, what would be your choice? Can you name two or three good books that would prove interesting to a boy of fifteen interested in manual training?

3 What are your favorite magazines and newspapers? In reading periodicals, what do you omit and what do you select? Should newspapers be read thoroughly? Will you suggest five or six periodicals appropriate for a school reading room? If the benefactor mentioned above should decide to send two periodicals to each pupil, which two would you recommend?

4 If a girl intends to be a musician, should she stop reading altogether, read widely, or specialize? Should a boy who intends to be a civil engineer read poetry? Of what value are histories to those who intend to take part in public affairs? What kind of literature should one read who intends to be a clerk or a factory laborer? What rule can you suggest in regard to how much time should be devoted to contemporary literature and how much to masterpieces of earlier times?

5 How many books do you own? Do you take books from the public library? Do you think public libraries

should contain, in the department of pure literature, acknowledged masterpieces only? What percentage of the fund for new books should a public library spend for fiction? Are reading circles a good thing, or are they a bore? Would it be better if books were not so cheap and libraries were not free? Are free textbooks an unmixed blessing?

6 What benefits not mentioned in this chapter can you think of? What injuries? What suggestions in regard to reading habits? Bring to class tributes to books, obtained from a dictionary of familiar quotations or from some other source.

CHAPTER XII

LITERATURE DEFINED

Let it be supposed that a building is to be erected in which shall be brought together all English literaturenot everything written in English, but the choicer productions to which the term literature is applied in its narrower, higher sense. What should such a collection include?

What is pure literature?

No question could arise over the plays of Shakespeare, or Milton's poems, or the novels of Dickens and Thackeray. Scores of writers would be accepted without hesitation. On the other hand, tons upon tons of printed matter-books, pamphlets, newspapers, and what not-all excellent in a way, would be promptly rejected. Manifestly a textbook in algebra deserves no place in such a collection, nor an almanac, nor a treatise on the manufacture of steel. Most works in science and history belong elsewhere. Sooner or later, however, vexing questions would arise; for the dividing line between mere books and pure literature is a vague one. Very convenient would be a serviceable definition of literature which might be applied in doubtful cases as the carpenter applies his foot rule to a stick of timber to see if it will answer his purpose.

Of the scores of definitions that have been penned, none is quite satisfactory; the thing to be defined is far too varied in character and too subtle in its nature to be bounded by a single sentence. To define literature is like trying to define beauty, or pleasure, or sorrow. Let us examine a few def

Definitions in general

initions, however, for each may suggest lines of profitable thought.

Emerson's definition

Emerson calls literature "a record of the best thought." Much that enters the mind, these six short words suggest, is necessarily commonplace, petty, not worth preserving. The mission of literature is to sift and winnow and garner. Men die, cities become ruins, nations fade into obscurity; thoughtthe best thought-endures, preserved in the written or printed page, for the poetry and the prose of a nation form the truest and most lasting record of the best that its men and women have achieved. The durability of literature and its high character are, perhaps, the leading ideas suggested by Emerson's definition. It reminds us that a good library is like a chest containing priceless heirlooms, fortunately not the hoarded possession of some proud family, but a legacy to all who appreciate their value.

Brooke's

definition

So brief a definition cannot well be complete; it suggests much that is true, but does not include the entire truth. Let us examine a definition of slightly greater length, by Stopford Brooke. In the estimation of this eminent scholar, literature is made up of "the written thoughts and feelings of intellectual men and women, arranged in a way that gives pleasure to the reader." Here are at last two new ideas, suggested by the words feelings and pleasure. Thought, as used by Emerson and Brooke, suggests First idea the mind of man, which considers and judges

intellectually. Feelings is a warmer word suggesting the heart, seat of the emotions-love, hate, fear, ambition, reverence, etc. Most of us are far less willing to share with others our heart emotions than we are to share the judgments of the intellect. Our feelings are so personal, so

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