One is sometimes asked by young people panting after the waterbrooks of
knowledge: “How shall I get the best out of books?” Here indeed, is one
of those questions which can be answered only in general terms, with
possible illustrations from one’s own personal experience. Misgivings,
too, as to one’s fitness to answer it may well arise, as wistfully
looking round one’s own bookshelves, one asks oneself: “Have I myself
got the best out of this wonderful world of books?” It is almost like
asking oneself: “Have I got the best out of life?”
As we make the survey, it will surely happen that our eyes fall on many
writers whom the stress of life, or spiritual indolence, has prevented
us from using as all the while they have been eager to be used; friends
we might have made yet never have made, neglected counsellors we would
so often have done well to consult, guides that could have saved us
many a wrong turning in the difficult way. There, in unvisited corners
of our shelves, what neglected fountains of refreshments, gardens in
which we have never walked, hills we have never climbed!
“Well,” we say with a sigh, “a man cannot read everything; it is life
that has interrupted our studies, and probably the fact is that we have
accumulated more books than we really need.” The young reader’s
appetite is largely in his eyes, and it is very natural for one who is
born with a taste for books to gather them about him at first
indiscriminately, on the hearsay recommendation of fame, before he
really knows what his own individual tastes are, or are going to be,
and in that wistful survey I have imagined, our eyes will fall, too,
with some amusement, on not a few volumes to which we never have had
any really personal relation, and which, whatever their distinction or
their value for others, were never meant for us. The way to do with
such books is to hand them over to some one who has a use for them. On
our shelves they are like so much good thrown away, invitations to
entertainments for which we have no taste. In all vital libraries, such
a process of progressive refection is continually going on, and to
realize what we do not want in books, or cannot use, must, obviously,
be a first principle in our getting the best out of them.
Yes, we read too many books, and too many that, as they do not really
interest us, bring us neither benefit nor diversion. Even from the
point of view of reading for pleasure, we manage our reading badly. We
listlessly allow ourselves to be bullied by publishers’ advertisements
into reading the latest fatuity in fiction, without, in one case out of
twenty, finding any of that pleasure we are ostensibly seeking.
Instead, indeed, we are bored and enervated, where we might have been
refreshed, either by romance or laughter. Such reading resembles the
idle absorption of innocuous but interesting beverages, which cheer as
little as they inebriate, and yet at the same time make frivolous
demands on the digestive functions. No one but a publisher could call
such reading “light.” Actually it is weariness to the flesh and
heaviness to the spirit.
If, therefore, our idea of the best in books is the recreation they can
so well bring; if we go to books as to a playground to forget our cares
and to blow off the cobwebs of business, let us make sure that we find
what we seek. It is there, sure enough. The playgrounds of literature
are indeed wide, and alive with bracing excitement, nor is there any
limit to the variety of the games. But let us be sure, when we set Out
to be amused, that we really are amused, that our humorists do really
make us laugh, and that our story-tellers have stories to tell and know
how to tell them. Beware of imitations, and, when in doubt, try
Shakespeare, and Dumas--even Ouida. As a rule, avoid the “spring
lists,” or “summer reading.” “Summer reading” is usually very hot work.
Hackneyed as it is, there is no better general advice on reading than
Shakespeare’s--
No profit is where is no pleasure taken,
In brief, sir, study what you most affect.
Not only in regard to books whose purpose, frankly, is recreation, but
also in regard to the graver uses of books, this counsel no less holds.
No reading does us any good that is not a pleasure to us. Her paths are
paths of pleasantness. Yet, of course, this does not mean that all
profitable reading is easy reading. Some of the books that give us the
finest pleasure need the closest application for their enjoyment. There
is always a certain spiritual and mental effort necessary to be made
before we tackle the great books. One might compare it to the effort of
getting up to see the sun rise. It is no little tug to leave one’s warm
bed--but once we are out in the crystalline morning air, wasn’t it
worth it? Perhaps our finest pleasure always demands some such
austerity of preparation. That is the secret of the truest
epicureanism. Books like Dante’s “Divine Comedy,” or Plato’s dialogues,
will not give themselves to a lounging reader. They demand a braced,
attentive spirit. But when the first effort has been made, how
exhilarating are the altitudes in which we find ourselves; what a glow
of pure joy is the reward which we are almost sure to win by our mental
mountaineering.
But such books are not for moments when we are unwilling or unable to
make that necessary effort. We cannot always be in the mood for the
great books, and often we are too tired physically, or too low down on
the depressed levels of daily life, even to lift our eyes toward the
hills. To attempt the great books--or any books at all--in such moods
and moments, is a mistake. We may thus contract a prejudice against
some writer who, approached in more fortunate moments, would prove the
very man we were looking for.
To know when to read is hardly less important than to know what to
read. Of course, every one must decide the matter for himself; but one
general counsel may be ventured: Read only what you want to read, and
only when you want to read it.
Some readers find the early morning, when they have all the world to
themselves, their best time for reading, and, if you are a good
sleeper, and do not find early rising more wearying than refreshing,
there is certainly no other time of the day when the mind is so eagerly
receptive, has so keen an edge of appetite, and absorbs a book in so
fine an intoxication. For your true book-lover there is no other
exhilaration so exquisite as that with which one reads an inspiring
book in the solemn freshness of early morning. One’s nerves seem
peculiarly strung for exquisite impressions in the first dewy hours of
the day, there is a virginal sensitiveness and purity about all our
senses, and the mere delight of the eye in the printed page is keener
than at any other time. “The Muses love the morning, and that is a fit
time for study,” said Erasmus to his friend Christianus of Lubeck; and,
certainly, if early rising agrees with one, there is no better time for
getting the very best out of a book. Moreover, morning reading has a
way of casting a spell of peace over the whole day. It has a sweet,
solemnizing effect on our thoughts--a sort of mental matins--and
through the day’s business it accompanies us as with hidden music.
There are others who prefer to do their reading at night, and I presume
that most readers of this paper are so circumstanced as to have no time
to spare for reading during the day. Personally, I think that one of
the best places to read in is bed. Paradoxical as it may sound, one is
not so apt to fall asleep over his book in bed as in the post-prandial
armchair. While one’s body rests itself, one’s mind, remains alert,
and, when the time for sleep comes at last, it passes into
unconsciousness, tranquilized and sweetened with thought and pleasantly
weary with healthy exercise. One awakens, too, next morning, with, so
to say, a very pleasant taste of meditation in the mouth. Erasmus,
again, has a counsel for the bedtime reader, expressed with much
felicity. “A little before you sleep,” he says, “read something that is
exquisite, and worth remembering; and contemplate upon it till you fall
asleep; and, when you awake in the morning, call yourself to an account
for it.”
In an old Atlantic Monthly, from which, if I remember aright, he
never rescued it, Oliver Wendell Holmes has a delightful paper on the
delights of reading in bed, entitled “Pillow-Smoothing Authors.”
Then, though I suppose we shall have the oculists against us, the cars
are good places to read in--if you have the power of detachment, and
are able to switch off your ears from other people’s conversation. It
is a good plan to have a book with you in all places and at all times.
Most likely you will carry it many a day and never give it a single
look, but, even so, a book in the hand is always a companionable
reminder of that happier world of fancy, which, alas! most of us can
only visit by playing truant from the real world. As some men wear
boutonnieres, so a reader carries a book, and sometimes, when he
is feeling the need of beauty, or the solace of a friend, he opens it,
and finds both. Probably he will count among the most fruitful moments
of his reading the snatched glimpses of beauty and wisdom he has caught
in the morning car. The covers of his book have often proved like some
secret door, through which, surreptitiously opened, he has looked for a
moment into his own particular fairy land. Never mind the oculist,
therefore, but, whenever you feel like it, read in the car.
One or two technical considerations may be dealt with in this place.
How to remember what one reads is one of them. Some people are blest
with such good memories that they never forget anything that they have
once read. Literary history has recorded many miraculous memories.
Still, it is quite possible to remember too much, and thus turn one’s
mind into a lumber-room of useless information. A good reader forgets
even more than he remembers. Probably we remember all that is really
necessary for us, and, except in so far as our reading is technical and
directed toward some exact science or profession, accuracy of memory
is not important. As the Sabbath was made for man, so books were made
for the reader, and, when a reader has assimilated from any given book
his own proper nourishment and pleasure, the rest of the book is so
much oyster shell. The end of true reading is the development of
individuality. Like a certain water insect, the reader instinctively
selects from the outspread world of books the building materials for
the house of his soul. He chooses here and rejects there, and remembers
or forgets according to the formative desire of his nature. Yet it
often happens that he forgets much that he needs to remember, and thus
the question of methodical aids to memory arises.
One’s first thought, of course, is of the commonplace book. Well, have
you ever kept one, or, to be more accurate, tried to keep one?
Personally, I believe in the commonplace book so long as we don’t
expect too much from it. Its two dangers are (1) that one is apt to
make far too many and too minute entries, and (2) that one is apt to
leave all the remembering to the commonplace book, with a consequent
relaxation of one’s own attention. On the other hand, the mere
discipline of a commonplace book is a good thing, and if--as I think is
the best way--we copy out the passages at full length, they are thus
the more securely fixed in the memory. A commonplace book kept with
moderation is really useful, and may be delightful. But the entries
should be made at full length. Otherwise, the thing becomes a mere
index, an index which encourages us to forget.
Another familiar way of assisting one’s memory in reading is to mark
one’s own striking passages. This method is chiefly worth while for the
sake of one’s second and subsequent readings; though it all depends
when one makes the markings--at what time of his life, I mean. Markings
made at the age of twenty years are of little use at thirty--except
negatively. In fact, I have usually found that all I care to read again
of a book read at twenty is just the passages I did not mark. This
consideration, however, does not depreciate the value of one’s
comparatively contemporary markings. At the same time, marking, like
indexing, is apt, unless guarded against, to relax the memory. One is
apt to mark a passage in lieu of remembering it. Still, for a second
reading, as I say--a second reading not too long after the first--
marking is a useful method, particularly if one regards his first
reading of a book as a prospecting of the ground rather than a taking
possession. One’s first reading is a sort of flying visit, during which
he notes the places he would like to visit again and really come to
know. A brief index of one’s markings at the end of a volume is a
method of memory that commended itself to the booklovers of former
days--to Leigh Hunt, for instance.
Yet none of these external methods, useful as they may prove, can
compare with a habit of thorough attention. We read far too hurriedly,
too much in the spirit of the “quick lunch.” No doubt we do so a great
deal from the misleading idea that there is so very much to read.
Actually, there is very little to read,--if we wish for real reading--
and there is time to read it all twice over. We--Americans--bolt our
books as we do our food, and so get far too little good out of them. We
treat our mental digestions as brutally as we treat our stomachs.
Meditation is the digestion of the mind, but we allow ourselves no time
for meditation. We gorge our eyes with the printed page, but all too
little of what we take in with our eyes ever reaches our minds or our
spirits. We assimilate what we can from all this hurry of superfluous
food, and the rest goes to waste, and, as a natural consequence,
contributes only to the wear and tear of our mental organism.
Books should be real things. They were so once, when a man would give a
fat field in exchange for a small manuscript; and they are no less real
to-day--some of them. Each age contributes one or two real books to the
eternal library--and always the old books remain, magic springs of
healing and refreshment. If no one should write a book for a thousand
years, there are quite enough books to keep us going. Real books there
are in plenty. Perhaps there are more real books than there are real
readers. Books are the strong tincture of experience. They are to be
taken carefully, drop by drop, not carelessly gulped down by the
bottleful. Therefore, if you would get the best out of books, spend a
quarter of an hour in reading, and three-quarters of an hour in
thinking over what you have read.
THE GUIDE TO DAILY
READING
PREPARED BY
ASA DON DICKINSON
The elaborate, systematic “course of reading” is a bore. After thirty
years spent among books and bookish people I have never yet met anyone
who would admit that he had ploughed through such a course from
beginning to end. Of course a few faithful souls, with abundant
leisure, have done this, just as there are men who have walked from New
York City to San Francisco. Good exercise, doubtless! But most of us
have not time for feats of such questionable utility.
Yet I myself and most of the booklovers whom I know have started
at one time or another to pursue a course of reading, and we have never
regretted our attempts. Why? Because this is an excellent way to
discover the comparatively small number of authors who have a message
that we need to hear. When such an one is discovered, one may with a
good conscience let the systematic course go by the board until one has
absorbed all that is useful from the store of good things offered by
the valuable new acquaintance.
Each one has his idiosyncrasies. If I may be permitted to allude to a
personal failing, let me confess that I have never read “Paradise Lost”
or “Pilgrim’s Progress.” I have hopefully dipped into them repeatedly,
but--I don’t like them. Some day I hope to, but until my mind is
ready for these two great world-books, I do not intend to waste time by
driving through them with set teeth. There are too many other good
books that I do enjoy reading. “In brief, Sir, study what you most
affect.”
The “Guide to Daily Readings” which follows makes no claim to be
systematic. The aim has been simply to introduce the reader to a goodly
company of authors--to provide a daily flower of thought for the
buttonhole, to-day a glorious rose of poetic fancy, to-morrow a pert
little pansy of quaint humor.
Yet nearly all the selections are doubly significant and interesting if
read upon the days to which they are especially assigned. For example,
on New Year’s Day it is suggested that one set one’s house in order by
reading Franklin’s “Rules of Conduct,” Longfellow’s “Psalm of Life,”
Bryant’s “Thanatopsis,” and Lowell’s “To the Future”; on January 19th,
Poe’s Birthday, one is directed to an excellent sketch of Poe and to
typical examples of his best work, “The Raven” and “The Cask of
Amontillado”; and on October 31st, Hallowe’en, one is reminded of
Burns’s “Tam O’Shanter” and Irving’s “Legend of Sleepy Hollow.”
The references are explicit in each case, so that it is a matter of
only a few seconds to find each one. For example, the reference to the
“Cask of Amontillado” is 4-Pt. I =67-77; which means that this tale is
ten pages long and will be found in Part I of volume 4, at page 67.
Excepting volumes 10-15 (Poetry), two volumes are bound in one in this
set, so it should be remembered that generally there are two pages
numbered 67 in each book.
The daily selections can in most cases be read in from fifteen minutes
to half an hour, and Dr. Eliot, President Emeritus of Harvard, has said
that fifteen minutes a day devoted to good literature will give every
man the essentials of a liberal education. If time can be found between
breakfast and the work-hours for these few minutes of reading, one will
receive more benefit than if it is done during the somnolent period
which follows the day’s work and dinner. It is a mistake, however, to
read before breakfast. Eyes and stomach are too closely related
to permit of this.
Happy is he who can read these books in company with a sympathetic
companion. His enjoyment of the treasure they contain will be doubled.
One final hint--when reading for something besides pastime, get in the
habit of referring when necessary to dictionary, encyclopædia, and
atlas. If on the subway or a railway train, jot down a memorandum of
the query on the flyleaf, and look up the answer at the first
opportunity.