A COLLEGE EDUCATION AT HOME
"Tumbling around in a library" was the phrase Oliver Wendell Holmes used
in describing in part his felicities in boyhood. One of the most
important things that wise students get out of their schooldays is a
familiarity with books in various departments of learning. The ability
to pick out from a library what is needed in life is of the greatest
practical value. It is like a man selecting his tools for intellectual
expansion and social service. "Men in every department of practical
life," says President Hadley of Yale, "men in commerce, in
transportation, or in manufactures--have told me that what they really
wanted from our colleges was men who have this selective power of using
books efficiently. The beginnings of this kind of knowledge are best
learned in any home fairly well furnished with books."
Libraries are no longer a luxury, but a necessity. A home without books
and periodicals and newspapers is like a house without windows. Children
learn to read by being in the midst of books; they unconsciously absorb
knowledge by handling them. No family can now afford to be without good
reading.
Children who are well supplied with dictionaries, encyclopedias,
histories, works of reference, and other useful books, will educate
themselves unconsciously, and almost without expense, and will learn many
things of their own accord in moments which would otherwise be wasted;
and which, if learned in schools, academies, or colleges, would cost ten
times as much as the expense of the books would be. Besides, homes are
brightened and made attractive by good books, and children stay in such
pleasant homes; while those whose education has been neglected are
anxious to get away from home, and drift off and fall into all manner of
snares and dangers.
It is astonishing how much a bright child will absorb from being brought
up in the atmosphere of good books, being allowed to constantly use them,
to handle them, to be familiar with their bindings and titles. It is a
great thing for children to be brought up in the atmosphere of books.
Many people never make a mark on a book, never bend down a leaf, or
underscore a choice passage. Their libraries are just as clean as the
day they bought them, and, often, their minds are just about as clean of
information. Don't be afraid to mark your books. Make notes in them.
They will be all the more valuable. One who learns to use his books in
early life, grows up with an increasing power for effective usefulness.
It is related that Henry Clay's mother furnished him with books by her
own earnings at the washtub.
Wear threadbare clothes and patched shoes if necessary, but do not pinch
or economize on books. If you can not give your children an academic
education you can place within their reach a few good books which will
lift them above their surroundings, into respectability and honor.
Is not one's early home the place where he should get his principal
training for life? It is here we form habits which shape our careers,
and which cling to us as long as we live. It is here that regular,
persistent mental training should fix the life ever after.
I know of pitiable cases where ambitious boys and girls have longed to
improve themselves, and yet were prevented from doing so by the
pernicious habits prevailing in the home, where everybody else spent the
evenings talking and joking, with no effort at self-improvement, no
thought of higher ideals, no impulse to read anything better than a
cheap, exciting story. The aspiring members of the family were teased
and laughed at until they got discouraged and gave up the struggle.
If the younger ones do not want to read or study themselves, they will
not let anybody else so inclined do so. Children are naturally
mischievous, and like to tease. They are selfish, too, and can not
understand why anyone else should want to go off by himself to read or
study when they want him to play.
Were the self-improvement habit once well established in a home, it would
become a delight. The young people would look forward to the study hour
with as much anticipation as to playing.
Were it possible for every family that squanders precious time, to spend
an evening in such a home, it would be an inspiration. A bright, alert,
intelligent, harmonious atmosphere so pervades a self-improving home that
one feels insensibly uplifted and stimulated to better things.
I know a New England family in which all the children and the father and
mother, by mutual consent, set aside a portion of each evening for study
or some form of self-culture. After dinner, they give themselves
completely to recreation. They have a regular romp and play, and all the
fun possible for an hour. Then when the time comes for study, the entire
house becomes so still that you could hear a pin drop. Everyone is in
his place reading, writing, studying, or engaged in some form of mental
work. No one is allowed to speak or disturb anyone else. If any member
of the family is indisposed, or for any reason does not feel like
working, he must at least keep quiet and not disturb the others. There
is perfect harmony and unity of purpose, an ideal condition for study.
Everything that would scatter the efforts or cause the mind to wander,
all interruptions that would break the continuity of thought, is
carefully guarded against. More is gained in one hour of close,
uninterrupted study, than in two or three broken by many interruptions,
or weakened by mind wandering.
Sometimes the habits of a home are revolutionized by the influence of one
resolute youth who declares himself, taking a stand and announcing that,
as for himself, he does not propose to be a failure, that he is going to
take no chances as to his future. The moment he does this, he stands out
in strong contrast with the great mass of young people who are throwing
away their opportunities and have not grit and stamina enough to do
anything worth while.
The very reputation of always trying to improve yourself in every
possible way, of being dead in earnest, will attract the attention of
everybody who knows you, and you will get many a recommendation for
promotion which never comes to those who make no special effort to climb
upward.
There is a great deal of time wasted even in the busiest lives, which, if
properly organized, might be used to advantage.
Many housewives who are so busy from morning to night that they really
believe they have no time for reading books, magazines, or newspapers
would be amazed to find how much they would have if they would more
thoroughly systematize their work. Order is a great time saver, and we
certainly ought to be able to so adjust our living plan that we can have
a fair amount of time for self-improvement, for enlarging life. Yet many
people think that their only opportunity for self-improvement depends
upon the time left after everything else has been attended to.
What would a business man accomplish if he did not attend to important
matters until he had time that was not needed for anything else? The
good business man goes to his office in the morning and plunges right
into the important work of the day. He knows perfectly well that if he
attends to all the outside matters, all the details and little things
that come up, sees everybody that wants to see him, and answers all the
questions people want to ask, that it will be time to close his office
before he gets to his main business.
Most of us manage somehow to find time for the things we love. If one is
hungry for knowledge, if one yearns for self-improvement, if one has a
taste for reading, he will make the opportunity.
Where the heart is, there is the treasure. Where the ambition is, there
is time.
It takes not only resolution but also determination to set aside
unessentials for essentials, things pleasant and agreeable to-day for the
things that will prove best for us in the end. There is always
temptation to sacrifice future good for present pleasure; to put off
reading to a more convenient season, while we enjoy idle amusements or
waste the time in gossip or frivolous conversation.
The greatest things of the world have been done by those who systematized
their work, organized their time. Men who have left their mark on the
world have appreciated the preciousness of time, regarding it as the
great quarry.
If you want to develop a delightful form of enjoyment, to cultivate a new
pleasure, a new sensation which you have never before experienced, begin
to read good books, good periodicals, regularly every day. Do not tire
yourself by trying to read a great deal at first. Read a little at a
time, but read some every day, no matter how little. If you are faithful
you will soon acquire a taste for reading--the reading habit; and it
will, in time, give you infinite satisfaction, unalloyed pleasure.
In a gymnasium, one often sees lax, listless people, who, instead of
pursuing a systematic course of training to develop all the muscles of
the body, flit aimlessly from one thing to another, exercising with
pulley-weights for a minute or two, taking up dumb-bells and throwing
them down, swinging once or twice on parallel bars, and so frittering
away time and strength. Far better it would be for such people to stay
away from a gymnasium altogether, for their lack of purpose and
continuity makes them lose rather than gain muscular energy. A man or
woman who would gather strength from gymnastic exercise must set about it
systematically and with a will. He must put mind and energy into the
work, or else continue to have flabby muscles and an undeveloped body.
[Illustration: Julia Ward Howe]
The physical gymnasium differs only in kind from the mental one.
Thoroughness and system are as necessary in one as in the other. It is
not the tasters of books--not those who sip here and there, who take up
one book after another, turn the leaves listlessly and hurry to the
end,--who strengthen and develop the mind by reading.
To get the most from your reading you must read with a purpose. To sit
down and pick up a book listlessly, with no aim except to pass away time,
is demoralizing. It is much as if an employer were to hire a boy, and
tell him he could start when he pleased in the morning, work when he felt
like it, rest when he wanted to, and quit when he got tired!
Never go to a book you wish to read for a purpose, if you can possibly
avoid it, with a tired, jaded mentality. If you do, you will get the
same in kind from it. Go to it fresh, vigorous, and with active, never
passive, faculties. This practise is a splendid and effective cure for
mind-wandering, which afflicts so many people, and which is encouraged by
the multiplicity of and facility of obtaining reading matter at the
present day.
What can give greater satisfaction than reading with a purpose, and that
consciousness of a broadening mind that follows it, and growth, of
expansion, of enriching the life, the consciousness that we are pushing
ignorance, bigotry, and whatever clouds the mind and hampers progress a
little further away from us?
The kind of reading that counts, that makes mental fiber and stamina is
that upon which the mind is concentrated; approaching a book with all
one's soul intent upon its contents.
How few people ever learn to concentrate their attention. Most of us
waste a vast amount of precious time dawdling and idling. We sit or
stand over our work without thinking. Our minds are blank much of the
time.
Passive reading is even more harmful in its effects than desultory
reading. It no more strengthens the brain than sitting down in a
gymnasium develops the body. The mind remains inactive, in a sort of
indolent revery, wandering here and there, without focusing anywhere.
Such reading takes the spring and snap out of the mental faculties,
weakens the intellect, and makes the brain torpid and incapable of
grappling with great principles and difficult problems.
What you get out of a book is not necessarily what the author puts into
it, but what you bring to it. If the heart does not lead the head; if
the thirst for knowledge, the hunger for a broader and deeper culture,
are not the motives for reading, you will not get the most out of a book.
But, if your thirsty soul drinks in the writer's thought as the parched
soil absorbs rain, then your latent possibilities and the potency of your
being, like delayed germs and seeds in the soil, will spring forth into
new life.
When you read, read as Macaulay did, as Carlyle did, as Lincoln did--as
did every great man who has profited by his reading--with your whole soul
absorbed in what you read, with such intense concentration that you will
be oblivious of everything else outside of your book.
"Reading furnishes us only with the materials of knowledge," said John
Locke; "it is thinking that makes what we read ours."
In order to get the most out of books, the reader must be a thinker. The
mere acquisition of facts is not the acquisition of power. To fill the
mind with knowledge that can not be made available is like filling our
houses with furniture and bric-à-brac until we have no room to move about.
Food does not become physical force, brain, or muscle until it has been
thoroughly digested and assimilated, and has become an integral part of
the blood, brain, and other tissues. Knowledge does not become power
until digested and assimilated by the brain, until it has become a part
of the mind itself.
If you wish to become intellectually strong, after reading with the
closest attention, form this habit: frequently close your book and sit
and think, or stand and walk and think--but think, contemplate, reflect.
Turn what you have read over and over in your mind.
It is not yours until you have assimilated it by your thought. When you
first read it, it belongs to the author. It is yours only when it
becomes an integral part of you.
Many people have an idea that if they keep reading everlastingly, if they
always have a book in their hands at every leisure moment, they will, of
necessity, become full-rounded and well-educated.
But they might just as well expect to become athletes by eating at every
opportunity. It is even more necessary to think than to read. Thinking,
contemplating what we have read, is what digestion and assimilation are
to the food.
Some of the biggest fools I know are always cramming themselves with
knowledge. But they never think. When they get a few minutes' leisure
they grab a book and go to reading. In other words, they are always
eating intellectually, but never digesting their knowledge or
assimilating it.
I know a young man who has formed such a habit of reading that he is
almost never without a book, a magazine, or a paper. He is always
reading at home, on the cars, at the railway stations, and he has
acquired a vast amount of knowledge. He has a perfect passion for
knowledge, and yet his mind seems to have been weakened by this perpetual
brain stuffing.
By every reader let Milton's words be borne in mind:
"Who reads
Incessantly, and to his reading brings not
A spirit and judgment equal or superior, . . .
Uncertain and unsettled still remains,
Deep versed in books and shallow in himself,
Crude or intoxicate, collecting toys
And trifles for choice matters, worth a sponge,
As children gathering pebbles on the shore."
When Webster was a boy, books were scarce, and so precious that he never
dreamed that they were to be read only once, but thought they ought to be
committed to memory, or read and re-read until they became a part of his
very life.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning says, "We err by reading too much, and out of
proportion to what we think. I should be wiser, I am persuaded, if I had
not read half as much; should have had stronger and better exercised
faculties, and should stand higher in my own appreciation."
Those who live more quietly do not have so many distracting influences,
and consequently think more deeply and reflect more than others. They do
not read so much but they are better readers.
You should bring your mind to the reading of a book, or to the study of
any subject, as you take an ax to the grindstone; not for what you get
from the stone, but for the sharpening of the ax.
The greatest advantage of books does not always come from what we
remember of them, but from their suggestiveness, their character-building
power.
"It is not in the library, but in yourself," says Fr. Gregory, "in your
self-respect and your consciousness of duty nobly done--that you are to
find the 'Fountain of Youth,' the 'Elixir of Life,' and all the other
things that tend to preserve life's freshness and bloom.
"It is a grand thing to read a good book--it is a grander thing to live a
good life--and in the living of such life is generated the power that
defies age and its decadence."
It is not the ability, the education, the knowledge that one has that
makes the difference between men. The mere possession of knowledge is
not always the possession of power; knowledge which has not become a part
of yourself, knowledge which can not swing into line in an emergency is
of little use, and will not save you at the critical moment.
To be effective, a man's education must become a part of himself as he
goes along. All of it must be worked up into power. A little practical
education that has become a part of one's being and is always available,
will accomplish more in the world than knowledge far more extensive that
can not be utilized.
No one better illustrates what books will do for a man, and what a
thinker will do with his books, than Gladstone, who was always far
greater than his career. He rose above Parliament, reached out beyond
politics, and was always growing. He had a passion for intellectual
expansion. His peculiar gifts undoubtedly fitted him for the church, or
he would have made a good professor at Oxford or Cambridge. But,
circumstances led him into the political arena, and he adapted himself
readily to his environment. He was an all round well read man, who
thought his way through libraries and through life.
One great benefit of a taste for reading, and access to the book world,
is the service it renders as a diversion and a solace.
What a great thing to be able to get away from ourselves, to fly away
from the harassing, humiliating, discouraging, depressing things about
us, to go at will to a world of beauty, joy, and gladness!
If a person is discouraged or depressed by any great bereavement or
suffering, the quickest and the most effective way of restoring the mind
to its perfect balance, to its normal condition, is to immerse it in a
sane atmosphere, an uplifting, encouraging, inspiring atmosphere, and the
most good in the world is found in the best books. I have known people
who were suffering under the most painful mental anguish, from losses and
shocks which almost unbalanced their minds, to be completely
revolutionized in their mental state by the suggestive power which came
from becoming absorbed in a great book.
Everywhere we see rich old men sitting around the clubs, smoking, looking
out of the windows, lounging around hotels, traveling about, uneasy,
dissatisfied, not knowing what to do with themselves, because they had
never prepared for this part of their lives. They put all their energy,
ambition, everything into their vocation.
I know an old gentleman who has been an exceedingly active business man.
He has kept his finger upon the pulse of events. He has known what has
been going on in the world during his whole active career. And he is now
as happy and as contented as a child in his retirement, because he has
always been a great reader, a great lover of his kind.
People who keep their minds bent in one direction too long at a time soon
lose their elasticity, their mental vigor, freshness, spontaneity.
If I were to quote Mr. Dooley, it would be:--"Reading is not thinking;
reading is the next thing this side of going to bed for resting the mind."
To my own mind, however, I would rather cite that versatile Englishman,
Lord Rosebery. In a speech at the opening of a Carnegie library at West
Calder, Midlothian, he made a characteristic utterance upon the value of
books, saying in substance:
"There is, however, one case in which books are certainly an end in
themselves, and that is to refresh and to recruit after fatigue. When
the object is to refresh and to exalt, to lose the cares of this world in
the world of imagination, then the book is more than a means. It is an
end in itself. It refreshes, exalts, and inspires the man. From any
work, manual or intellectual, the man with a happy taste for books comes
in tired and soured and falls into the arms of some great author, who
raises him from the ground and takes him into a new heaven and a new
earth, where he forgets his bruises and rests his limbs, and he returns
to the world a fresh and happy man."
"Who," asks Professor Atkinson, "can overestimate the value of good
books, those strips of thought, as Bacon so finely calls them, voyaging
through seas of time, and carrying their precious freight so safely from
generation to generation? Here are finest minds giving us the best
wisdom of present and past ages; here are the intellects gifted far
beyond ours, ready to give us the results of lifetimes of patient
thought, imaginations open to the beauty of the universe."
The lover of good books can never be very lonely; and, no matter where he
is, he can always find pleasant and profitable occupation and the best of
society when he quits work.
Who can ever be grateful enough for the art of printing; grateful enough
to the famous authors who have put their best thoughts where we can enjoy
them at will? There are some advantages of intercourse with great minds
through their books over meeting them in person. The best of them live
in their books, while their disagreeable peculiarities, their
idiosyncrasies, their objectionable traits are eliminated. In their
books we find the authors at their best. Their thoughts are selected,
winnowed in their books. Book friends are always at our service, never
annoy us, rasp or nettle us. No matter how nervous, tired, or
discouraged one may be, they are always soothing, stimulating, uplifting.
We may call up the greatest writer in the middle of the night when we can
not sleep, and he is just as glad to see us as at any other time. We are
not excluded from any nook or corner in the great literary world; we can
visit the most celebrated people that ever lived without an appointment,
without influence, without the necessity of dressing or of observing any
rules of etiquette. We can drop in upon a Milton, a Shakespeare, an
Emerson, a Longfellow, a Whittier without a moment's notice and receive
the warmest welcome.
"You get into society, in the widest sense," says Geikie, "in a great
library, with the huge advantage of needing no introductions, and not
dreading repulses. From that great crowd you can choose what companions
you please, for in the silent levees of the immortals there is no pride,
but the highest is at the service of the lowest, with a grand humility.
You may speak freely with any, without a thought of your inferiority; for
books are perfectly well bred, and hurt no one's feelings by any
discriminations."
"It is not the number of books," says Professor William Mathews, "which a
young man reads that makes him intelligent and well informed, but the
number of well-chosen ones that he has mastered, so that every valuable
thought in them is a familiar friend."
It is only when books have been read and reread with ever deepening
delight, that they are clasped to the heart, and become what Macaulay
found them to be, the old friends who are never found with new faces, who
are the same to us in our wealth and in our poverty, in our glory and in
our obscurity. No one gets into the inmost heart of a beautiful poem, a
great history, a book of delicate humor, or a volume of exquisite essays,
by reading it once or twice. He must have its precious thoughts and
illustrations stored in the treasure-house of memory, and brood over them
in the hours of leisure.
"A book may be a perpetual companion. Friends come and go, but the book
may beguile all experiences and enchant all hours."
"The first time," says Goldsmith, "that I read an excellent book, it is
to me just as if I had gained a new friend; when I read over a book I
have perused before, it resembles the meeting with an old one."
"No matter how poor I am," says William Ellery Channing, "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 threshold to sing to me of Paradise; and
Shakespeare to open to me the worlds of imagination and the workings of
the human heart,--I shall not pine for want of intellectual
companionship, though excluded from what is called the best society in
the place where I live."
"Books," says Milton, "do preserve as in a violl, the purest efficacie
and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. A good Booke is
the pretious life-blood of a master spirit, imbalm'd and treasur'd up on
purpose to a Life beyond Life."
"A book is good company," said Henry Ward Beecher. "It comes to your
longing with full instruction, but pursues you never. It is not offended
at your absent-mindedness, nor jealous if you turn to other pleasures, of
leaf, or dress, or mineral, or even of books. It silently serves the
soul without recompense, not even for the hire of love. And yet more
noble, it seems to pass from itself, and to enter the memory, and to
hover in a silvery transformation there, until the outward book is but a
body and its soul and spirit are flown to you, and possess your memory
like a spirit."