# St. Nicholas/Volume 32/Number 3/Books and Reading

Books and Reading
Serious ReadingYoung readers often suppose things very difficult to understand which really are quite easy, and consequently they continue to read only stories long after they would find as much pleasure in acquiring knowledge that would be both useful and entertaining. There are simple books on nearly all great subjects, about which young people ought to know something.
Architecture, for example, will furnish material for a lifetime of hard study, but there is no reason why you should not learn something of that marvelous art that has created so many beautiful structures throughout the world. One can easily learn a little about the different styles, how they began, and how they rose from the rude huts of peasants to palaces and cathedrals. A little reading on the subject now and then will soon give you more interest in every building you see. Once begun, you will find your pleasure will lead you to go on. Other subjects may be taken up in the same way, for all knowledge, nowadays, lies in books and is open to every reader. Many boys love ships, but very few think of taking up the study of ships from the beginning. Here, again, you will find it useful, as often recommended in this department, to apply to your elders for advice. Nearly all older readers wish they were younger so that they might read on many subjects they neglected when they had more time for reading. You, who are still young, might begin in time.
The New Year is an excellent time for making good resolutions.
News from Africa When Livingstone was in Africa the greater part of the central region was entirely unknown and uncivilized. Even later than Livingstone’s day, there was no such thing as a native who could read in all that vast domain. But to-day the newspapers tell of receiving photographs from Uganda, on the north shore of Victoria Nyanza, one showing school-boys sitting on the earth floor of their school-room, busied over their readers and other text-books, another in which natives are learning to write, another showing a book-shop besieged by forty or fifty eager buyers of the books on sale. About fifty thousand natives can now read and write in the very kingdom where less than twenty years ago it was punished as a crime to attempt to learn to read.
All this, it is said, came from an appeal made in 1875, by the late Sir Henry M. Stanley, the “White Pasha,” for missionaries and teachers. The facts here given are from a recent article in the New York “Sun,” and are interesting as showing how reading can civilize a whole nation. It is to be hoped that these natives will be taught what to read as well as how to read, for there is as much need of one art as of the other.
Parkman’s Deed of Justice.A story is told about Francis Parkman, the historian, which shows that in spite of impaired eyesight he was not blind to injustice. A friend met him walking along the street, holding two street boys by their coat collars. In reply to his friend’s request for an explanation Parkman said; “I found this boy had eaten an apple without dividing with his little brother. Now I ’m going to buy one for the little boy, and make the big one look on while he eats it.”
After reading this incident, we should expect fairness of treatment in Parkman’s histories.
Two Kinds of ReadingIf we make the pages of our books merely a sort of pleasant maze in which to set our minds to wandering during idle hours, we in reading shall have acquired a pastime that is usually harmless. But there is a vast difference between such a way of spending our time, and the reading that teaches us to think as the greatest and wisest men and women have thought. Words stand in our minds for certain ideas or images. From what we read we learn to make these plain or hazy, clearly drawn pictures or carelessly executed sketches, and thus our powers of thinking are directly trained by our method of reading.
​If you see the word “camel,” for instance, what arises in your mind? There is a difference in different minds. One sees a vague, half-finished blot with one—no, two—or is it one hump?—and a crooked neck, and any-old-kind of feet, and-—what kind of a tail has a camel, anyway?—I don’t know—let it go! Another paints for itself a ship of the desert, shaggy, cross-patient, pad-footed, tassel-tailed, droop-mouthed,—the whole creature comes into view in the “mind’s eye” as if in reality. It has color, motion, character—everything.
In reading the great poets, you will find they make you see images clearly, quickly, sharply. In reading poor writing, all is in a fog. The reader learns to be satisfied with partial images, and thus is apt to think confusedly or incompletely. Good writers do not leave one in doubt about questions of right or wrong, but make the reader know one from the other. Remember, then, that as we read we learn how to think.
While you are young.A wise writer has said: “It is the books read before we reach maturity that most influence the mind,” If he is right, “books for the young” should be these most carefully chosen. As one grows older the mind is less flexible; it is less easily moved, and more readily returns to its own attitude.
Being advised and preached to, and told to do this, that, and the other, is not pleasant, and reading—which should be among our greatest pleasures—ought not to be approached as if one were about to take medicine. But it will do no harm for young readers ta be very strict with themselves; that helps sensible pride instead of offending self-esteem. So won't boys and girls be careful how they give their best reading-years to books that will not give something in return?
If you will read weak and foolish books, at least remember to regard them as jesters in cap and bells, keeping your own poise and value despite all their gibes and caperings.
A hand to the little ones.It amazing how well a little child will make his way over a very rugged path if there is at his side one to assist him over the really impossible steps. In reading or in lessons, it is the privilege of the big brother or sister to act as guide, philosopher, and friend when the path is too steep for a younger climber. There is another reward besides the feeling of satisfaction; for in helping another we often learn more than in walking independently along the road.
Quick traveling is pleasant, but it is the slow traveler who sees the country.
Washington Irving.It is to be hoped that none of you need any introduction to delightful old Rip Van Winkle—not only as Joseph Jefferson has created him in the play by Dion Boucicault, but in the pages of Irving; and hardly less familiar should be the “Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” Yet it is to be feared that too many stop here, and miss the delights that are amid the pages of “The Alhambra,” “Wolfert’s Roost,” “Bracebridge Hall” —in almost any of Irving's sweetly flowing, clean, and bright stories. You will be glad also to know the life of the author, and cannot but become more fond of him as you know him better. Irving’s friendship with Sir Walter Scott, his unselfish devotion to his brothers and sisters, the touching romance of his early life—all may be read to our improvement.
Americans should cherish the writers of their own land, at least next to those grand geniuses who made all the world their country and all mankind their friends.
Lowell on Reading.What literary man of our time was a more discriminating book-lover than Lowell?
But have you ever rightly considered what the mere ability to read means? That it is the key which admits us to the whole world of thought and fancy and imagination, lo the company of saint and sage, of the wisest and the wittiest at their wisest and wittiest moments? That it enables us to see with the keenest eyes, hear with the finest ears, and listen to the sweetest voices of all time? More than that, it annihilates time and space for us; it revives for us, without a miracle, the Age of Wonder, endowing us with the shoes of swiftness and the cap of darkness, so that we walk invisible like fern-seed, and witness unharmed the plague at Athens or Florence or London; accompany Cesar on his marches, or look in on Catiline in council with his fellow-conspirators, or Guy Fawkes in the cellar of St. Stephen's.
James Russell Lowell.
But why should we be eager for closer acquaintance with Catiline and Guy Fawkes?