The Democratic press. [volume] (Ravenna, O. [Ohio]) 1868-1901, 1881-02-17
The Ghoica of Books.

1t matters little what dull people
read. One book is as good as another,
and none will be of any service. This
is not the case with bright persons.
Their reading gives direction to charac-
ter and method to thought. The biogra-
ply of every strong man or woman
shows that they were educated by some
one book, or by some living teacher
who acted upon them with books 81
lent force. 1t matters not so much, in
any case, what the book may be; the
only qualification is that it shall deal
directly with some of the chief interests
of life. The late Gen. Bartlett was
fond of quoting the case of the ragged
boy who crawled into the Boston public
library and asked for dime novel, the
same person appearing few years
later and asking for a rare edition of
Shakespeare, which the library did not
contain. Daniel Webster explained his
success in becoming a successful reader
By the fact that he and his brothers
I had so few books, as children, that, to
use his own words, 1--WE thought that
they were all to be got by heart" Every
| good book whether it be one of thewOrld's
| great books OF one of the books which
| contains only the thinking and eXper-
| ience of man wise in his generation,
| if thoroughly studied, makes the read
| er likeminded with the author. What
| Webster read he made his own. Emer-
son has confessed that Plutarch and
Montaigne were books upon which he
fed in his youth with irresistible attrac-
| ton. Carlyle says: ''What have found
| the university did for me was that it
| taught me to read in various languages
and various sciences, so that l could
| @.I
things and try anything l wanted to
make myself master of gradually, as l
found it suit me-" He was as omniver-
Gus Il reader as Macaulay, with an in
sight into the heart of things which the
| English historian never possessed, and
his advice to the Edinburgh students
on the choice of books suggests the Sc
| cret of his own studies. He says:
| Learn to be discriminative in your
reading, to read all kinds of things that
| you have an interest in, and that you
find to be really fit for what you are en-
gagged in If you are in the strait" he
| adds, s.a very good indication rs to
! choice-perhaps the best you can get
| is u book that you have great curiosity
about. What Carlyle did at Edinburgh
university was to lay the large, liberal
| groundwork for Il man OF letters, and
| the trauitlon goes that no one ever pun
its library to such service. or entered
more deeply, while II student. into the
| deep currents of the worlds history.
| Goethe, in ..Wilhelm Meister," and
John Foster, in his letters and essays,
| have shown how culture begins. Emer-
| sons three ruies-never to read any
| book that is not year old; never to
! read any but famed books; never to
read any but what YOU like-are prac-
/ tical and modern, and can hardly be
! improved upon. James Freeman
Clarke's rules are nearly the same-to
read actively, not passively; to read
with system and method. Prob
ably the experience of all who have be-
come intelligent and thoughtful people
conforms to the same general rules.
They have worked upon individual
| lines of choice in the selection of books.
Ono firm at JacksOnVille Fla. eX-