In employing your time, consider it your privilege to spend your leisure hours in deepening the mind, and preparing yourselves for future action. The human mind was made for action. In virtuous action consists its highest enjoyment. Reading is good employment, and very useful, if well understood. Some books are injurious to the mind, as well as useful.
Books have a silent, but powerful influence in the formation of character.
The poems of Homer inspired Alexander with an insatiable thirst for fame and military glory, and they were the foundation of the superstructure that covered the world. The memoirs of this conqueror stamped a like character upon C sar these, and similar ones, made Napoleon a second Alexander. To instruct others is beneficial to the mind. It deepens the knowledge which it already possesses, and quickens it to acquire more. It is beneficial to the moral habits.