The age-herald., 1898-01-29
A TASTE FOR READING.
Benefits Derived From a Foadness of Good
 = Literature.

From the Boston Herald.
 Ask any hostess of your acquaintance what type of guest she has found the hardest to entertain during a protracted
 visit, and she will answer, 'The woman
 who never reads,' says a writer in the
 Philadelphia Inquirer.
 Probably you know her yourself. She slips into your guest room 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 my self"
 You are busy woman, and you con- graduate yourself that your hospitality is to be extended to one of your sex who is capable of making her stay something be- side nervous strain on the part of your
 self as hostess and your household in general.
 You have fitted up that guest room of yours with especial reference to the hoped- | for bookish tastes of it's occupants. There | is a goodly assortment of current litera- | ture scattered about. Being a reader your self, you can imagine nothing more de- liGhtsome than an opportunity for cozy
 companionship with the latest magazine or novel.
 You delicately allude to your thoughtful
 ness in providing the to you, literary feasts, and suggest to your guest that she
 take her pick of all that the famiy library
 contains, and then-well, then comes the
 diSilluSionment.
 Never while that woman is in your house
 do you catch her with a 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 de.
 spondment over bad weather and sets all your hospftable instincts edge by the | iil-concealed fact that she is bored.
 "Oh!' you sigh. "If she would only
 read. Just to see her fifteen minutes of
 the day with her eyes fastened interestedly
 upon some bit of printed matter" A 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 is for physical well being. To get right to the root of the matter,
 the reading habit needs to be cultivated in
 the nursery. As soon as children are able to pick out the words in their primers they should be taught to consider that more en- joyment is to be found between the covers
 of book than among all the toys and gimcraoks that clutter up the play room
 No need to make bookworms of them, but
 tactful mother may implant the read
 ing 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 1 childish request, "Please read to me-
 provided the youthful petitioner is able to
 read to himself. The same obliging grand l ihother UT srdciouS aunt who IS always 1 ready to do the youngsters bidding in this l direction Is also responsible for the fad l of spinning nursery yarns to listeners who are old enough and schooled enough to
 cull their own tales from books. When there is no personal application on the chld's part how can there be any mem tai stimulus? No wonder we find so many i fnsipid, vacillating minds amongst grown ups when we remember how little thought concentration is exacted from the average child.
 There would be fewer restless men and | certainly fewer discontented women if the 1 reading habit was made feature of nurs- cry 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 existence.