The Virginia enterprise. [volume] (Virginia, St. Louis County, Minn.) 1893-19??, 1898-02-11
A Taste for Reading.

ASK any hostess OF your acquaintance
what type of guest she has found the
hardest to entertain during protracted
visit, and she will answer, The woman
who never reads says writer in the
Philadelphia Inquirer.
Probably you know her yourself. She
slips into your guestroOm some day, with
the promising assurance, ''Now, l don't
want to be made company of. Just let
me be one of the family and look out for
myself
Yu are busy woman and you congrat-
ulate yourself that your hospitality is to
be extended to one of your Sex who is
capab BILE of making her stay something be-
sides Il nervous strain on the part of
yourself as hostess and your household in
general.
You have fitted up that guestroom of
yours with especial reference to the
hoped-for bookish tastes of it's occupants.
There is a goodly assortment of current
literature scattered about. Being read
err yourself, you can imagine nothing
more delightsome than an opportunity for
cozy cOmpanionship with the latest mag
aZine or novel.
You delicately allude to your thought
fulness in providing the to you literary
feasts, and suggest to your guest that
she take her pick Of all that the family
library contains, and then-well, then
Never while that woman is in your
house do you catch her with book or
paper in her hand. Days when you run
short of amusements for her she wanders
aimlessly about from room to room: Is
plainly respondent over bad weather and
sets all your hospitable instincts on edge
by the ill-concealed fact, that she is bored
"O!' you sigh. IF she would only
read. Just to see her fifteen minutes of
the day with her eyes fastened Interested
ly upon some bit of printed matter"
taste for reading may be as surely
cultivated as any other taste. and a
healthy appetite for good literature is as
necessary for mental nourishment as
good food for physical we'll being.
the reading habit needs to be- cultivated
in the nursery. AS soon as children are
able to pick out the words in their prim-
ers they should be taught to consider that
more enjoyment is to be found between
the covers of a book than among all the
toys and grimcracks that clutter up the
playroom. No need to make bookworms
plant the reading idea into the juvenile
mind and so carefully nurture it that in
after years it will bear intellectual fruits
of incalculable benefit.
Laziness is, usually the foundation for
the childish request, 'Please read to me-
provided the yOutnful petitioner IS able
to read to himself. The same obligins
grandmother or gracious aunt who is al
ways ready to do the youngsters bidding
in this direction is also responsible for the
fad of spinning nursery yarns to listeners
who are old enough and schooled enough
to Gull their own tales from books.
When there is no personal application
on the child's part how can there be any
mental stimulus? No wonder we find SO
many insipid, vacillatng minds amongst
grow1l-ups when we remember how little
thought concentration is exacted from the
average child.
There would be fewer restless men AMI
certainly fewer discontented women if
the reading habit was made a feature of
nursery training.
Fortunate is the man or woman who
has discovered in books that world which
will widen the most contracted sphere
and glorify the most commonplace eX-
istence. 3: