Chapter V._How to Do It

How To Read.

I.--_The Choice of Books_.

You are not to expect any stories this time. There will be very few words

about Stephen, or Sybil, or Sarah. My business now is rather to answer, as

well as I can, such questions as young people ask who are beginning to

have their time at their own command, and can make their own selection of

the books they are to read. I have before me, as I write, a handful of

letters which have been written to the office of "The Young Folks," asking

such questions. And all my intelligent young friends are asking each other

such questions, and so ask them of me every day. I shall answer these

questions by laying down some general rules, just as I have done before

but I shall try to put you into the way of choosing your own books, rather

than choosing for you a long, defined list of them.

I believe very thoroughly in courses of reading, because I believe in

having one book lead to another. But, after the beginning, these courses

for different persons will vary very much from each other. You all go out

to a great picnic, and meet together in some pleasant place in the woods,

and you put down the baskets there, and leave the pail with the ice in the

shadiest place you can find, and cover it up with the blanket. Then you

all set out in this great forest, which we call Literature. But it is only

a few of the party, who choose to start hand in hand along a gravel-path

there is, which leads straight to the Burgesses' well, and probably those

few enjoy less and gain less from the day's excursion than any of the

rest. The rest break up into different knots, and go some here and some

there, as their occasion and their genius call them. Some go after

flowers, some after berries, some after butterflies; some knock the rocks

to pieces, some get up where there is a fine view, some sit down and copy

the stumps, some go into water, some make a fire, some find a camp of

Indians and learn how to make baskets. Then they all come back to the

picnic in good spirits and with good appetites, each eager to tell the

others what he has seen and heard, each having satisfied his own taste and

genius, and each and all having made vastly more out of the day than if

they had all held to the gravel-path and walked in column to the

Burgesses' well and back again.

This, you see, is a long parable for the purpose of making you remember

that there are but few books which it is necessary for every intelligent

boy and girl, man and woman, to have read. Of those few, I had as lief

give the list here.

First is the Bible, of which not only is an intelligent knowledge

necessary for your healthy growth in religious life, but--which is of less

consequence, indeed--it is as necessary for your tolerable understanding

of the literature, or even science, of a world which for eighteen

centuries has been under the steady influence of the Bible. Around the

English version of it, as Mr. Marsh shows so well, the English language

of the last three centuries has revolved, as the earth revolves around the

sun. He means, that although the language of one time differs from that of

another, it is always at about the same distance from the language of King

James's Bible.

[Footnote: Marsh's Lectures on the English Language: very

entertaining books.]

Second, every one ought to be quite well informed as to the history of the

country in which he lives. All of you should know the general history of

the United States well. You should know the history of your own State in

more detail, and of your own town in the most detail of all.

Third, an American needs to have a clear knowledge of the general features

of the history of England.

Now it does not make so much difference how you compass this general

historical knowledge, if, in its main features, you do compass it. When

Mr. Lincoln went down to Norfolk to see the rebel commissioners, Mr.

Hunter, on their side, cited, as a precedent for the action which he

wanted the President to pursue, the negotiations between Charles the

First and his Parliament. Mr. Lincoln's eyes twinkled, and he said, "Upon

questions of history I must refer you to Mr. Seward, for he is posted upon

such things, and I do not profess to be. My only distinct recollection of

the matter is, that Charles lost his head." Now you see it is of no sort

of consequence how Mr. Lincoln got his thoroughly sound knowledge of the

history of England,--in which, by the way, he was entirely at home,--and

he had a perfect right to pay the compliment he did to Mr. Seward; but it

was of great importance to him that he should not be haunted with the fear

that the other man did know, really, of some important piece of

negotiation of which he was ignorant. It was important to him to know

that, so that he might be sure that his joke was--as it was--exactly the

fitting answer.

Fourth, it is necessary that every intelligent American or Englishman

should have read carefully most of Shakespeare's plays. Most people would

have named them before the history, but I do not. I do not care, however,

how early you read them in life, and, as we shall see, they will be among

your best guides for the history of England.

Lastly, it is a disgrace to read even the newspaper, without knowing

where the places are which are spoken of. You need, therefore, the very

best atlas you can provide yourself with. The atlas you had when you

studied geography at school is better than none. But if you can compass

any more precise and full, so much the better. Colton's American Atlas is

good. The large cheap maps, published two on one roller by Lloyd, are

good; if you can give but five dollars for your maps, perhaps this is the

best investment. Mr. Fay's beautiful atlas costs but three and a half

dollars. For the other hemisphere, Black's Atlas is good. Rogers's,

published in Edinburgh, is very complete in its American maps. Stieler's

is cheap and reliable.

When people talk of the "books which no gentleman's library should be

without," the list may be boiled down, I think--if in any stress we should

be reduced to the bread-and-water diet--to such books as will cover these

five fundamental necessities. If you cannot buy the Bible, the agent of

the County Bible Society will give you one. You can buy the whole of

Shakespeare for fifty cents in Dicks's edition. And, within two miles of

the place where you live, there are books enough for all the historical

study I have prescribed. So, in what I now go on to say, I shall take it

for granted that we have all of us made thus much preparation, or can make

it. These are the central stores of the picnic, which we can fall back

upon, after our explorations in our various lines of literature.

Now for our several courses of reading. How am I to know what are your

several tastes, or the several lines of your genius? Here are, as I learn

from Mr. Osgood, some seventy-six thousand five hundred and forty-three

Young Folks, be the same more or less, who are reading this paper. How am

I to tell what are their seventy-six thousand five hundred and forty-three

tastes, dispositions, or lines of genius? I cannot tell. Perhaps they

could not tell themselves, not being skilled in self-analysis; and it is

by no means necessary that they should be able to tell. Perhaps we can set

down on paper what will be much better, the rules or the system by which

each of them may read well in the line of his own genius, and so find out,

before he has done with this life, what the line of that genius is, as far

as there is any occasion.

Do Not Try To Read Everything.

That is the first rule. Do not think you must be a Universal Genius. Do

not "read all Reviews," as an old code I had bade young men do. And give

up, as early as you can, the passion, with which all young people

naturally begin, of "keeping up with the literature of the time." As for

the literature of the time, if one were to adopt any extreme rule, Mr.

Emerson's would be the better of the two possible extremes. He says it is

wise to read no book till it has been printed a year; that, before the

year is well over, many of those books drift out of sight, which just now

all the newspapers are telling you to read. But then, seriously, I do not

suppose he acts on that rule himself. Nor need you and I. Only, we will

not try to read them all.

Here I must warn my young friend Jamie not to go on talking about

renouncing "nineteenth century trash."

It will not do to use such words about a century in which have written

Goethe, Fichte, Cuvier, Schleiermacher, Martineau, Scott, Tennyson,

Thackeray, Browning, and Dickens, not to mention a hundred others whom

Jamie likes to read as much as I do.

No. We will trust to conversation with the others, who have had their

different paths in this picnic party of ours, to learn from them just the

brightest and best things that they have seen and heard. And we will try

to be able to tell them, simply and truly, the best things we find on our

own paths. Now, for selecting the path, what shall we do,--since one

cannot in one little life attempt them all?

You can select for yourself, if you will only keep a cool head, and have

your eyes open. First of all, remember that what you want from books is

the information in them, and the stimulus they give to you, and the

amusement for your recreation. You do not read for the poor pleasure of

saying you have read them. You are reading for the subject, much more than

for the particular book, and if you find that you have exhausted all the

book has on your subject, then you are to leave that book, whether you

have read it through or not. In some cases you read because the author's

own mind is worth knowing; and then the more you read the better you know

him. But these cases do not affect the rule. You read for what is in the

books, not that you may mark such a book off from a "course of reading,"

or say at the next meeting of the "Philogabblian Society" that you "have

just been reading Kant" or "Godwin." What is the subject, then, which you

want to read upon?

Half the boys and girls who read this have been so well trained that they

know. They know what they want to know. One is sure that she wants to know

more about Mary Queen of Scots; another, that he wants to know more about

fly-fishing; another, that she wants to know more about the Egyptian

hieroglyphics; another, that he wants to know more about propagating new

varieties of pansies; another, that she wants to know more about "The Ring

and the Book"; another, that he wants to know more about the "Tenure of

Office bill" Happy is this half. To know your ignorance is the great first

step to its relief. To confess it, as has been said before, is the second.

In a minute I will be ready to say what I can to this happy half; but one

minute first for the less happy half, who know they want to read something

because it is so nice to read a pleasant book, but who do not know what

that something is. They come to us, as their ancestors came to a relative

of mine who was librarian of a town library sixty years ago: "Please, sir,

mother wants a sermon book, and another book."

To these undecided ones I simply say, now has the time come for decision.

Your school studies have undoubtedly opened up so many subjects to you

that you very naturally find it hard to select between them. Shall you

keep up your drawing, or your music, or your history, or your botany, or

your chemistry? Very well in the schools, my dear Alice, to have started

you in these things, but now you are coming to be a woman, it is for you

to decide which shall go forward; it is not for Miss Winstanley, far less

for me, who never saw your face, and know nothing of what you can or

cannot do.

Now you can decide in this way. Tell me, or tell yourself, what is the

passage in your reading or in your life for the last week which rests on

your memory. Let us see if we thoroughly understand that passage. If we do

not, we will see if we cannot learn to. That will give us a "course of

reading" for the next twelve months, or if we choose, for the rest of our

lives. There is no end, you will see, to a true course of reading; and, on

the other hand, you may about as well begin at one place as another.

Remember that you have infinite lives before you, so you need not hurry in

the details for fear the work should be never done.

Now I must show you how to go to work, by supposing you have been

interested in some particular passage. Let us take a passage from

Macaulay, which I marked in the Edinburgh Review for Sydney to speak,

twenty-nine years ago,--I think before I had ever heard Macaulay's name. A

great many of you boys have spoken it at school since then, and many of

you girls have heard scraps from it. It is a brilliant passage, rather too

ornate for daily food, but not amiss for a luxury, more than candied

orange is after a state dinner. He is speaking of the worldly wisdom and

skilful human policy of the method of organization of the Roman Catholic

Church. He says:--

"The history of that Church joins together the two great ages of human

civilization. No other institution is left standing which carries the mind

back to the times when the smoke of sacrifice rose from the Pantheon, when

camelopards and tigers bounded in the Flavian amphitheatre. The proudest

royal houses are but of yesterday, when compared with the line of the

Supreme Pontiffs. That line we trace back in an unbroken series, from the

Pope who crowned Napoleon in the nineteenth century, to the Pope who

crowned Pepin in the eighth; and far beyond the time of Pepin the august

dynasty extends, till it is lost in the twilight of fable. The Republic of

Venice came next in antiquity. But the Republic of Venice was modern when

compared to the Papacy; and the Republic of Venice is gone, and the Papacy

remains. The Papacy remains, not in decay, not a mere antique, but full of

life and youthful vigor. The Catholic Church is still sending forth to the

farthest ends of the world missionaries as zealous as those who landed in

Kent with Augustine; and still confronting hostile kings with the same

spirit with which she confronted Attila....

"She was great and respected before the Saxon had set foot on Britain,

before the Frank had passed the Rhine, when Grecian eloquence still

flourished at Antioch, when idols were still worshipped in the temple of

Mecca. And she may still exist in undiminished vigor, when some traveller

from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his stand

on a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St. Paul's."

I. We will not begin by considering the wisdom or the mistake of the

general opinion here laid down. We will begin by trying to make out what

is the real meaning of the leading words employed. Look carefully along

the sentence, and see if you are quite sure of what is meant by such terms

as "The Roman Catholic Church," "the Pantheon," "the Flavian

amphitheatre," "the Supreme Pontiffs," "the Pope who crowned Napoleon,"

"the Pope who crowned Pepin," "the Republic of Venice," "the missionaries

who landed in Kent," "Augustine," "the Saxon had set foot in Britain,"

"the Frank had passed the Rhine," "Grecian eloquence still flourished at

Antioch," "idols in Mecca," "New Zealand," "London Bridge," "St. Paul's."

For really working up a subject--and this sentence now is to be our

subject--I advise a blank book, and, for my part, I like to write down the

key words or questions, in a vertical line, quite far apart from each

other, on the first pages. You will see why, if you will read on.

II. Now go to work on this list. What do you really know about the

organization of the Roman Catholic Church? If you find you are vague about

it, that such knowledge as you have is only half knowledge, which is no

knowledge, read till you are clear. Much information is not necessary, but

good, as far as it goes, is necessary on any subject. This is a

controverted subject. You ought to try, therefore, to read some statement

by a Catholic author, and some statement by a Protestant. To find out what

to read on this or any subject, there are different clews.

1. Any encyclopædia, good or bad, will set you on the trail. Most of you

have or can have an encyclopædia at command. There are one-volume

encyclopædias better than nothing, which are very cheap. You can pick up

an edition of the old Encyclopædia Americana, in twelve volumes, for ten

or twelve dollars. Or you can buy Appleton's, which is really quite good,

for sixty dollars a set. I do not mean to have you rest on any

encyclopædia, but you will find one at the start an excellent guide-post.

Suppose you have the old Encyclopædia Americana. You will find there that

the "Roman Catholic Church" is treated by two writers,--one a Protestant,

and one a Catholic. Read both, and note in your book such allusions as

interest you, which you want more light upon. Do not note everything which

you do not know, for then you cannot get forward. But note all that

specially interests you. For instance, it seems that the Roman Catholic

Church is not so called by that church itself. The officers of that church

might call it the Roman church, or the Catholic church, but would not call

it the Roman Catholic church. At the Congress of Vienna, Cardinal Consalvi

objected to the joint use of the words Roman Catholic church. Do you know

what the Congress of Vienna was? No? then make a memorandum, if you want

to know. We might put in another for Cardinal Consalvi. He was a man, who

had a father and mother, perhaps brothers and sisters. He will give us a

little human interest, if we stop to look him up. But do not stop for him

now. Work through "Roman Catholic Church," and keep these memoranda in

your book for another day.

2. Quite different from the encyclopædia is another book of reference,

"Poole's Index." This is a general index to seventy-three magazines and

reviews, which were published between the years 1802 and 1852. Now a great

deal of the best work of this century has been put into such journals. A

reference, then, to "Poole's Index" is a reference to some of the best

separate papers on the subjects which for fifty years had most interest

for the world of reading men and women. Let us try "Poole's Index" on "The

Republic of Venice." There are references to articles on Venice in the New

England Magazine, in the Pamphleteer, in the Monthly Review, Edinburgh,

Quarterly, Westminster, and De Bow's Reviews. Copy all these references

carefully, if you have any chance at any time of access to any of these

journals. It is not, you know, at all necessary to have them in the

house. Probably there is some friend's collection or public library where

you can find one or more of them. If you live in or near Boston, or New

York, or Philadelphia, or Charleston, or New Orleans, or Cincinnati, or

Chicago, or St. Louis, or Ithaca, you can find every one.

When you have carefully gone down this original list, and made your

memoranda for it, you are prepared to work out these memoranda. You begin

now to see how many there are. You must be guided, of course, in your

reading, by the time you have, and by the opportunity for getting the

books. But, aside from that, you may choose what you like best, for a

beginning. To make this simple by an illustration, I will suppose you have

been using the old Encyclopædia Americana, or Appleton's Cyclopædia and

Poole's Index only, for your first list. As I should draw it up, it would

look like this:--

CYCLOPÆDIA. POOLE'S INDEX.

ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH.

See (for instance) Eclectic Rev., 4th S. 13, 485.

Council of Trent. Quart. Rev., 71, 108.

Chrysostom. For. Quart. Rev., 27, 184.

Congress of Vienna. Brownson's Rev., 2d S. 1, 413; 3, 309.

Cardinal Consalvi. N. Brit. Rev., 10, 21.

THE PANTHEON.

Built by Agrippa. Consecrated,

607, to St. Mary ad Martyros.

Called Rotunda.

THE FLAVIAN AMPHITHEATRE.

The Coliseum, _b_. by T. Flavius

Vespasian.

SUPREME PONTIFFS.

Popes. The line begins with New-Englander, 7, 169.

St. Peter, A. D. 42. Ends N. Brit. Rev., 11, 135.

with Pius IX., 1846.

POPE WHO CROWNED NAPOLEON.

Pius VII., at Notre Dame, in For. Quart. Rev., 20, 54.

Paris, Dec. 2, 1804.

POPE WHO CROWNED PEPIN.

Probably Pepin le Bref is meant.

But he was not crowned by

a Pope. Crowned by Archbishop

Boniface of Mayence,

at the advice of Pope Zachary.

_b_. @ 715. _d_. 768.

REPUBLIC OF VENICE.

452 to 1815. St. Real's History. Quart. Rev. 31, 420.

Otway's Tragedy, Venice Preserved. Month. Rev., 90, 525.

Hazlitt's Hist, of Venice. West. Rev., 23, 38.

Ruskin's Stones of Venice.

MISSIONARIES IN KENT.

Dublin Univ. Mag., 21, 212.

AUGUSTINE.

There are two Augustines. This

is St. Austin, _b_. in 5th century,

_d_. 604-614.

Southey's Book of Church.

Sharon Turner's Anglo-Saxons.

Wm. of Malmesbury.

Bede's Ecc. History.

SAXON IN BRITAIN.

Turner as above. Edin. Rev., 89, 79.

Ang.-Saxon Chronicle. Quart. Rev., 7, 92.

Six old Eng. Chronicles. Eclect. Rev., 25, 669.

FRANK PASSED THE RHINE.

Well established on west side, For. Quart. Rev., 17, 139.

at the beginning of 5th century.

GREEK ELOQUENCE AT ANTIOCH.

Muller's Antiquitates Antiochianæ Greek Orators. Ed. Rev., 36, 62.

IDOLS IN MECCA.

Burckhardt's Travels.

Burton's Travels.

NEW ZEALAND.

3 islands, as large as Italy. N. Am. Rev., 18, 328.

Discovered, 1642; taken by Cook

for England, 1769.

Gov. sent out, 1838. West. Rev., 45, 133.

Thomson's story of N. Z. Edin. Rev., 91, 231; 56, 333.

Cook's Voyages. N. Brit. Rev., 16, 176.

Sir G. Gray's Poems, &c. of Living Age.

Maoris.

LONDON BRIDGE.

5 elliptical arches. "Presents

an aspect unequalled for interest

and animation."

ST. PAUL'S.

Built in thirty years between

1675 and 1705, by Christ.

Wren.

Now I am by no means going to leave you to the reading of cyclopædias.

The vice of cyclopædias is that they are dull. What is done for this

passage of Macaulay in the lists above is only preliminary. It could be

easily done in three hours' time, if you went carefully to work. And when

you have done it, you have taught yourself a good deal about your own

knowledge and your own ignorance,--about what you should read and what

you should not attempt. So far it fits you for selecting your own course

of reading.

I have arranged this only by way of illustration. I do not mean that I

think these a particularly interesting or particularly important series of

subjects. I do mean, however, to show you that the moment you will sift

any book or any series of subjects, you will be finding out where your

ignorance is, and what you want to know.

Supposing you belong to the fortunate half of people who know what they

need, I should advise you to begin in just the same way.

For instance, Walter, to whom I alluded above, wants to know about

_Fly-Fishing_. This is the way his list looks.

FLY-FISHING.

CYCLOPEDIA. POOLE'S INDEX.

(For instance) Quart. Rev., 69, 121; 37, 345.

W. Scott, Redgauntlet. Edin. Rev., 78, 46, or 87; 93,

174, or 340.

Dr. Davy's Researches, 1839. Am. Whig Rev., 6, 490.

Cuvier and Valenciennes, Hist. N. Brit. Rev., 11, 32, or 95; I,

Naturelle des Poissons, Vol. 326; 8, 160; or Liv. Age, 2,

XXI. 291; 17, I.

Blackwood, 51, 296.

Richardson's Fauna Bor. Amer. Quart. Rev., 67, 98, or 332; 69,

226.

Blackwood, 10, 249; 49, 302;

De Kay, Zoölogy of N. Y. 21, 815; 24, 248; 35, 775;

Agassiz, Lake Superior. 38, 119; 63, 673; 5, 123; 5,

281; 7, 137.

Fraser, 42, 136.