THE POCKET UNIVERSITY
Books for Study and Reading
BY LYMAN ABBOTT
There are three services which books may render in the home: they may
be ornaments, tools, or friends.
I was told a few years ago the following story which is worth retelling
as an illustration of the use of books as ornaments. A millionaire who
had one house in the city, one in the mountains, and one in the South,
wished to build a fourth house on the seashore. A house ought to have a
library. Therefore this new house was to have a library. When the house
was finished he found the library shelves had been made so shallow that
they would not take books of an ordinary size. His architect proposed
to change the bookshelves. The millionaire did not wish the change
made, but told his architect to buy fine bindings of classical books
and glue them into the shelves. The architect on making inquiries
discovered that the bindings would cost more than slightly shop-worn
editions of the books themselves. So the books were bought, cut in two
from top to bottom about in the middle, one half thrown away, and the
other half replaced upon the shelves that the handsome backs presented
the same appearance they would have presented if the entire book had
been there. Then the glass doors were locked, the key to the glass
doors lost, and sofas and chairs and tables put against them. Thus the
millionaire has his library furnished with handsome bindings and these
I may add are quite adequate for all the use which he wishes to make of
them.
This is a rather extreme case of the use of books as ornaments, but it
illustrates in a bizarre way what is a not uncommon use. There is this
to be said for that illiterate millionaire: well-bound books are
excellent ornaments. No decoration with wall paper or fresco can make a
parlor as attractive as it can be made with low bookshelves filled with
works of standard authors and leaving room above for statuary, or
pictures, or the inexpensive decoration of flowers picked from one’s
own garden. I am inclined to think that the most attractive parlor I
have ever visited is that of a bookish friend whose walls are thus
furnished with what not only delights the eye, but silently invites the
mind to an inspiring companionship.
More important practically than their use as ornaments is the use of
books as tools. Every professional man needs his special tools--the
lawyer his law books, the doctor his medical books, the minister his
theological treatises and his Biblical helps. I can always tell when I
go into a clergyman’s study by looking at his books whether he is
living in the Twentieth Century or in the Eighteenth. Tools do not make
the man, but they make his work and so show what the man is.
Every home ought to have some books that are tools and the children
should be taught how to use them. There should be at least an atlas, a
dictionary, and an encyclopædia. If in the evening when the family talk
about the war in the Balkans the father gets out the atlas and the
children look to see where Roumania and Bulgaria and Greece and
Constantinople and the Dardanelles are on the map, they will learn more
of real geography in half an hour than they will learn in a week of
school study concerning countries in which they have no interest. When
there is reading aloud in the family circle, if every unfamiliar word
is looked up in a dictionary, which should always lie easily accessible
upon the table, they will get unconsciously a widening of their
vocabulary and a knowledge of the use of English which will be an
invaluable supplement to the work of their teacher of English in the
school. As to cyclopædias they are of all sizes from the little six-
volumed cyclopædia in the Everyman’s Library to the twenty-nine volumed
Encyclopædia Britannica, and from the general cyclopædia with more or
less full information on every conceivable topic to the more
distinctive family cyclopædia which covers the life of the household.
Where there are children in the family the cyclopædia which covers the
field they are most apt to be interested in--such as “The Library of
Work & Play” or “The Guide Series” to biography, music, pictures, etc.
--is the best one to begin with. After they have learned to go to it for
information which they want, they will desire a more general cyclopædia
because their wants have increased and broadened.
So much for books as ornaments and as tools. Certainly not less
important, if comparisons can be made I am inclined to say more
important, is their usefulness as friends.
In Smith College this distinction is marked by the College authorities
in an interesting and valuable manner. In the library building there is
a room for study. It is furnished with a number of plain oak or walnut
tables and with chairs which do not invite to repose. There are
librarians present to get from the stacks the special books which the
student needs. The room is barren of ornament. Each student is hard at
work examining, comparing, collating. She is to be called on to-morrow
in class to tell what she has learned, or next week to hand in a thesis
the product of her study. All eyes are intent upon the allotted task;
no one looks up to see you when you enter. In the same building is
another room which I will call The Lounge, though I think it bears a
different name. The books are upon shelves around the wall and all are
within easy reach. Many of them are fine editions. A wood fire is
burning in the great fireplace. The room is furnished with sofas and
easy chairs. No one is at work. No one is talking. No! but they are
listening--listening to authors whose voices have long since been
silent in death.
In every home there ought to be books that are friends. In every day,
at least in every week, there ought to be some time which can be spent
in cultivating their friendship. This is reading, and reading is very
different from study.
The student has been at work all the morning with his tools. He has
been studying a question of Constitutional Law: What are the powers of
the President of the United States? He has examined the Constitution;
then Willoughby or Watson on the Constitution; then he turns to The
Federalist; then perhaps to the Constitutional debates, or to the
histories, such as Von Holst’s Constitutional History of the United
States, or to treatises, such as Bryce’s American Commonwealth. He
compares the different opinions, weighs them, deliberates, endeavors to
reach a decision. Wearied with his morning pursuit of truth through a
maze of conflicting theories, he puts his tools by and goes to dinner.
In the evening he sits down in the same library for an hour with his
friends. He selects his friend according to his mood. Macaulay carries
him back across the centuries and he lives for an hour with The
Puritans or with Dr. Samuel Johnson. Carlyle carries him unharmed for
an hour through the exciting scenes of the French Revolution; or he
chuckles over the caustic humor of Thackeray’s semi-caricatures of
English snobs. With Jonathan Swift as a guide he travels with Gulliver
into no-man’s land and visits Lilliput or Brobdingnag; or Oliver
Goldsmith enables him to forget the strenuous life of America by taking
him to “The Deserted Village.” He joins Charles Lamb’s friends, listens
to the prose-poet’s reveries on Dream-Children, then closes his eyes
and falls into a reverie of his own childhood days; or he spends an
hour with Tennyson, charmed by his always musical but not often virile
verse, or with Browning, inspired by his always virile but often rugged
verse, or with Milton or Dante, and forgets this world altogether, with
its problems and perplexities, convoyed to another realm by these
spiritual guides; or he turns to the autobiography of one of the great
men of the past, telling of his achievements, revealing his doubts and
difficulties, his self-conflicts and self-victories, and so inspiring
the reader to make his own life sublime. Or one of the great scientists
may interpret to him the wonders of nature and thrill him with the
achievements of man in solving some of the riddles of the universe and
winning successive mastery over its splendid forces.
It is true that no dead thing is equal to a living person. The one
afternoon I spent in John G. Whittier’s home, the one dinner I took
with Professor Tyndall in his London home, the one half hour which
Herbert Spencer gave to me at his Club, mean more to me than any equal
time spent in reading the writings of either one of them. These
occasions of personal fellowship abide in the memory as long as life
lasts. This I say with emphasis that what I say next may not be
misunderstood--that there is one respect in which the book is the best
of possible friends. You do not need to decide beforehand what friend
you will invite to spend the evening with you. When supper is over and
you sit down by the evening lamp for your hour of companionship, you
give your invitation according to your inclination at the time. And if
you have made a mistake, and the friend you have invited is not the one
you want to talk to, you can “shut him up” and not hurt his feelings.
Remarkable is the friend who speaks only when you want to listen and
can keep silence when you want silence. Who is there who has not been
sometimes bored by a good friend who went on talking when you wanted to
reflect on what he had already said? Who is there who has not had his
patience well nigh exhausted at times by a friend whose enthusiasm for
his theme appeared to be quite inexhaustible? A book never bores you
because you can always lay it down before it becomes a bore.
Most families can do with a few books that are tools. In these days in
which there is a library in almost every village, the family that has
an atlas, a dictionary, and a cyclopædia can look to the public library
for such other tools as are necessary. And we can depend on the library
or the book club for books that are mere acquaintances--the current
book about current events, the books that are read to-day and forgotten
to-morrow, leaving only a residuum in our memory, the book that, once
read, we never expect to read again. In my own home this current
literature is either borrowed and returned or, if purchased, as soon as
it has been used is passed along to neighbors or to the village
library. Its room is better than its company on my over-crowded book
shelves.
But books that are friends ought to abide in the home. The very form of
the book grows familiar; a different edition, even a different copy,
does not quite serve the same friendly purpose. If the reader is wise
he talks to his friend as well as listens to him and adds in pencil
notes, in the margin or on the back pages of the book, his own
reflections. I take up these books marked with the indications of my
conversation with my friend and in these pencilled memoranda find an
added value. Sometimes the mark emphasizes an agreement between my
friend and me, sometimes it emphasizes a disagreement, and sometimes it
indicates the progress in thought I have made since last we met. A
wisely marked book is sometimes doubled in value by the marking.
Before I bring this essay to a close, already lengthened beyond my
predetermined limits, I venture to add four rules which may be of value
at least to the casual reader.
For reading, select the book which suits your inclination. In study it
is wise to make your will command your mind and go on with your task
however unattractive it may prove to you. You may be a Hamiltonian, and
Jefferson’s views of the Constitution may repel you, or even bore you.
No matter. Go on. Scholarship requires persistence in study of matter
that repels or even bores the student. You may be a devout believer and
Herbert Spencer repellent. Nevertheless, if you are studying you may
need to master Herbert Spencer. But if you are reading, read what
interests you. If Scott does not interest you and Dickens does, drop
Scott and read Dickens. You need not be any one’s enemy; but you need
not be a friend with everybody. This is as true of books as of persons.
For friendship some agreement in temperament is quite essential.
Henry Ward Beecher’s application of this principle struck me as
interesting and unique. He did a great deal of his reading on the train
in his lecture tours. His invariable companion was a black bag and the
black bag always contained some books. As I am writing from
recollection of a conversation with him some sixty years ago my
statement may lack in accuracy of detail, but not, I think, in
essential veracity. He selected in the beginning of the year some four
departments of reading, such as Poetry, History, Philosophy, Fiction,
and in each department a specific course, such as Greek Poetry,
Macaulay’s History, Spencer’s Philosophy, Scott’s Novels. Then he read
according to his mood, but generally in the selected course: if poetry,
the Greek poets; if history, Macaulay; if philosophy, Spencer; if
fiction, Scott. This gave at once liberty to his mood and unity to his
reading.
One may read either for acquisition or for inspiration. A gentleman who
has acquired a national reputation as a popular lecturer and preacher,
formed the habit, when in college, of always subjecting himself to a
recitation in all his serious reading. After finishing a chapter he
would close the book and see how much of what he had read he could
recall. One consequence is the development of a quite marvelous memory,
the results of which are seen in frequent and felicitous references in
his public speaking to literature both ancient and modern.
He who reads for inspiration pursues a different course. If as he
reads, a thought expressed by his author starts a train of thought in
his own mind, he lays down his book and follows his thought wherever it
may lead him. He endeavors to remember, not the thought which the
author has recorded, but the unrecorded thought which the author has
stimulated in his own mind. Reading is to him not an acquisition but a
ferment. I imagine from my acquaintance with Phillips Brooks and with
his writings that this was his method.
I have a friend who says that he prefers to select his authors for
himself, not to have them selected for him. But he has money with which
to buy the books he wants, a room in which to put them, and the broad
culture which enables him to make a wise selection. Most of us lack one
at least of these qualifications: the money, the space, or the
knowledge. For most of us a library for the home, selected as this
Pocket Library has been has three great advantages: the cost is not
prohibitive; the space can easily be made in out home for the books;
and the selection is more wisely made than any we could make for
ourselves. For myself I should be very glad to have the editors of this
series come into my library, which is fairly large but sadly needs
weeding out, give me a literary appraisal of my books, and tell me what
volumes in their respective departments they think I could best
dispense with to make room for their betters, and what their betters
would be.
To these considerations in favor of such a home library as this, may be
added the fact that the books are of such a size that one can easily
put a volume in his pocket when he is going on a train or in a trolley
car. For busy men and women often the only time for reading is the time
which too many of us are apt to waste in doing nothing.
Perhaps the highest use of good books is their use as friends. Such a
wisely selected group of friends as this library furnishes is an
invaluable addition to any home which receives it and knows how to make
wise use of it. I am glad to have the privilege of introducing it and
hope that this introduction may add to the number of homes in which it
will find a welcome.