Dear Comrade:
Ingersoll said: "Words are the garments of thought and the robes of
ideas." This is a beautiful and poetic way of expressing the
relationship between words and thoughts. Words are really the body which
we give to our thoughts. Until they are clothed in words, our thoughts
are only ghosts of ideas. Other people cannot see or come into contact
with them, and they can have but little influence upon the world.
Without thought, no language is possible. It is equally true that
without language, no growth of thought is possible. It is futile to try
to determine which is first, language or thought. The two are entirely
necessary to each other and make possible social and individual
development.
Every time that you add a word to your vocabulary, you have added to
your mental equipment. You have also added greatly to your power of
enjoyment. Through these words you will come into a new relationship to
your fellow men. Each new word enlarges the circle of your acquaintance.
A knowledge of language brings us into a circle of wonderful friends.
When we have learned to read we need never more be lonely. Some one has
written in a book somewhere just the thing we are hungry for at this
moment.
In the pages of a book we can meet and talk with the great souls who
have written in these pages their life's experience. No matter what mood
you are in, you can find a book to suit that mood. No matter what your
need, there is a book which meets that need. Form the habit of reading
and you will find it a wonderful source of pleasure and of profit.
Nor do we need to be barred because of our lack of educational
advantages in our youth. Buckle, the author of the greatest history that
has ever been written, left school at the age of fourteen, and it is
said that at that age, except a smattering of mathematics, he knew only
how to read; but when he died at the age of forty, this man, who did not
know his letters when he was eight years old, could read and write seven
languages and was familiar with ten or twelve more. He had written a
wonderful book and had become a teacher of teachers. Engraven upon his
marble altar tomb is the following couplet:
"The written word remains long after the writer.
The writer is resting under the earth, but his words endure."
Good books are so cheap nowadays that they are within the reach of every
one of us. Let us not be content to live in the narrow world of work and
worry. Let us forget the struggle occasionally in the reading of books,
and let us prepare ourselves, by reading and studying, for the battle
for the emancipation of the workers of the world.
Yours for Education,