Knoxville daily chronicle. [volume] (Knoxville, Tenn.) 1870-1882, 1881-12-18

single well employed winter. Two hours
night would carry person over wide
range of general reading. In that time,
during the after supper hours of single
season one might become thoroughly book
ed in almost any department of knowledge.
He might go over English OF French, or7our
end. He might become an adept in several
branches of science skilled in the history
and principles of political economy, COM
merce or agriculture, conversant with
painting, architecture and sculpture fir ON
their origin, might read through score of
the finest biographies of the greatest men
that ever lived On earth, or become familiar
through books of travels and exploration
with half dozen of the most interesting
and famous lands beneath the sun. Very
few realize how much ground may be gone
over, and how much information may be ac-
quired in a brief interval of well selected
reading during one single winter season.
Many of the best read men and women of
OR time ard some of the greatest scholars
on earth have become such by carefully hus-
culture only two hours day. How many
persons we meet who bewail their lack o:
early opportunity for gaining knowledge,
almost weep because in youth and early
life they received so poor an intellectual
outfit and preparation. Such persons can
do vastly more than they think to repair
such defects and become intelligent and
learned In the very short two hours or
hour and q half of each night after supper,
they might, in a very brief time, by indus
try and patience, make up the loss in
almost any direction they please Next to
religion on this earth is inteligence---k
edge. 1t gives respect. 1t gives happiness.
1t lifts one up in the scale of being and
worth. 1t is disgrace to be ig-
norant amid the intellectual light and
activity of this 18th century, with all the
books and periodicals about US and almost
as cheap as water There is no excuse in
these days for any man OF woman to look
stolid and blank in the face, revealing dull
unthinking mind within.
Every home in city and country should
be organized on the principle Of intelli-
gence and culture. When night comes let
the ample comfortable or dining or kitchen
table be put into position. Let there be
ample light for all, that no eyes, young or
old, be strained. Let the books and papers
and magazines be brought out. Let the
fires be genial and bright. Let the little
folks, if any in the family, be put to bed
at an early and convenient hour, that the
mothers may join in the feast. And soon
every such home will take on another char
acter. The house will be regulated all day
in reference to the evening hours. The
father will hasten home from business to
fheai 10
of biography or travels or history or
science, and life in that dwelling will be a
different and higher thing
There is nothing mothers need SO much,
engrossed as they are all day i'll their hun
dred distracting home cares, as the mental
change, quickening and rest that come from
contact with live and noble books; and as
much, and even more, do our business
men need the same diversion
and stimulus, immersed all day
long in the buying and selling, the profits
and losses of life. And if the yonng men of
our city, and in the country round about us,
only realized how much they might add to
their stock of information, intellectual pow
er, usefulness and worth by spending their
nights at home or at the city library, in
stead of running a;mlessly through the
town or neighborhood, frequenting the bill
lard saloons ond cheap pleasure haunts,
they would turn over a new leaf in their
life biography and eonsecrate their even
ing hours to the ennobling uses of mental
and self culture.
"What shall I read" does any ask ?
Read books that interest and profit you.
Read novels? Yes, good standard ones
Read poetry, nothing SO refning-it cult
Yates the Imaginative, the taste, stirs and
delights the musical nature. Read history
it will make you wise, says Bacon. Read
art for culture. Read works on science,
| they will increase your knowledge and love
of nature. Read the bright magazines,
| Scribner Harper, some of the numbers are
wonderfully entertaining and full of in
struction. Read essays and criticisms
they will discipline your judgment. Read
the daily papers-they will keep yoIf in
formed on what is going on in this great
busy driving world. Surely there is enough
to read, of every kind, to suit every taste
and preference, full of profit and pleasure.
The great thing is to read, to form the
habit of reading, and when formed, to keep
1t up at all hazards, for life
The taste for reading may be cultivated
and grows like any other taste. 1t may die
Of neglect and disease, like any other habit.
| 1leetu tHeI, Teati, fead, retC, until lNleLAt-
! gence becomes second nature to you, and
life will lose its humdrum commences, and
all things will be invested with new interest
and delight Says the great Sir John Her
schel, ''if were to pray for taste which
should stand me under every variety of cir
cumstances, and be a source of happiness
and cheerfulness to me through life, and o
shield against its ills, however things might
go amiss, and the world frown upon me, ii
would be taste for reading. Give man
this taste, and the means of gratifying it,
and you can hardly fail of making min
| happy. You make him a denizen of al
nations, a contemporary of all ages"