The Ohio Democrat. (Logan, O. [Ohio]) 1886-1906, 1890-07-19
HuNcERlNe FOR BOOKS.

Tho Greed of tho Man whose Appetite
for Reading Has Become Over De-
veloped.
I have picture hanging In my H.
brary, n lithograph, Of which many Of
my readers may have seen copies. 1t
represents gray-baired old book-lover
At the top Of long flight of steps. He
finds himself in clover, so to speak,
among rare old editions, books he has
longed to look upon and never seen be-
fore, rarities, precious old volumes,
incundbula cradle.books, printed while
the art was in its infancy--its glorious
infancy for it was born giant. The
old book worm is so intoxicated with the
sight and handling Of the priceless
treasures that he can not boar to put one
OF the volumes back after he has taken
1t from the shelf. So there he stands
one book open in his hands, a volume
under each arm, and one or moro be-
tween his legs-loaded with as many as
he can possibly hold at the same time.
Now, that is Just the way in which
the extreme form of book-hunger shows
| itself in the reader whose appetite has
become over developed. He wants to
read so many books that he over-crams
himself with the crude materials of
knowledge, which becomes knowledge
only when the mental digestion has time
to assimilate them. never can go into
that famous corner bookstore" and look
over the new books in the row before
me, as enter the door, without seeing
half dozen which l want to read, or at
least to know something about. can
not empty my purse of its contents, and
crowd nv book shelves with all those
volumes. The titles OF many Of them
interest me. I look into one or two,
perhaps. have sometimes picked up a
line or a sentence, in these momentary
glances between the uncut leaves OF
new book, which have never forgotten
AS trivial but bona tde example, one day
opened book on duelling. remember
only these words: "COnSerrons-la, cette no
bic institution" had never before seer
duelling called noble institution, ant
wish / had taken the name of the
book. Book-tasting is not necessaril,
profitless, but it is very stimulating, ant
makes one hungry for more than hi
; needs for the nourishment Of his think
ing-marrow. To feed this Unsuitable
hunger, the abstracts, the reviews, d.
their best. But these, again, have
grown so numerous and so crowded witt
matter that it $ hard to find time t
master their contents. We are accus
, toned, therefore, to look for analyses o
these periodicals, and at last we hav'
, placed before us a formidable-lookinI
, monthly, The Review of Reviews. Afte
the analyses comes the newspaper nc
! tice: and there is still room for the epi
) gram, which sometimes makes shor
, work with all that has gone before o
the same subject.
r 1t is just as we'll to recognize the fac
3 that if one should read day and night
5 confining himself to his own language
t he could notpretend to keep up with th
l press. He might as well try to rae
with a locomotive The first discipline
Q therefore, is that ofdespair. If you coul
: stick to your reading day and night ft
0 fifty years, what learned idiot yo
: would become long before the half-cer
tury was over Well, then, there is Il
t use in gorging ones self with knowledge
and no need of self-reproach becaus
, one is content to remain more or les
g ignorant of many things which iutere'
his fellow-creatures. We get good dei
y of knowledge through the atmospher'
}. we learn great deal by accidental hea
}, say, provided wo have the morddm
o our own consciousness which makes tn
}. wise remark, tho significant feet, til
Il instructive INCIDENT, take hold upon i
s After the staRe of despair comes I'll
1,t; NNr,c find
Z" we are not so much worse off than mo
!. of our neighbors as we supposed. III
+. fractional value of the wisest shows
small numerator divided by an intini'
denominator of knowledge. - Olive
:, Wendell Holmes, in Atlantic.