The daily morning journal and courier., 1902-08-20

| WOEld OVer NASMe-NoS to he Ool Ioped Through.
 The other evening when the Presid- ing Genius of the State of Massachu-
 sets came into my study he saw the
 morning paper lying unopened on the
 settee by the fireplace.
 Haven't you read this yet?" he said. No, not to-day"
 Where are you, anyway? Why not?''
 I said I hadn't felt up to it yet
 didn't feel profound enough-something
 to that effect.
 l The P. G. s. of M. thinks a news
 paper should be read in ten minutes. He looked over at me with sort of
 slow, pitying Boston-public-library ex-
 pression he has sometimes.
 I behaved as well as I could-took no
 notice for minute.
 "The fact is I have changed" said, about papers and some things. I have times of thinking. I'm improved
 considerably" added recklessly.
 Still the same pained Boston-public- 1 library expression-oniy turned on a
 little harder
 Seems to me-" said, "when a man can't feel superior to other people in this world he might at least be allowed 1 the privilege of feeling superior to him. self once In a while-spells of it." | He intimated that the trouble with me was that I wanted both. I admit
 ted that had cravings for both. said I thought I'd be a little easier to get
 along with If they were more satisfied. He intimated that I was easier to get along with than ought to be, or that
 seemed to think I was. He did not
 put it in so many words. The P. G. S. of M. never says anything that can be
 got hold of and answered. Finally I determined to answer him whether he had said anything or not.
 Well" I said, T may feel superior
 to other people sometimes. I may
 even feel superior to myself, but I
 haven't got to the point where I feel
 superior to newspaper-to a whole
 world at once. I don't try to read 1t in ten minutes. I don't try to make a
 whole day of the whole world a foot note to my oatmeal mush. I don't treat I the whole human race, trooping past my breakfast, as a parenthesis in my
 own mind don't try to read a great,
 serious, boundless thing like a daily l newspaper, unfolded out of starlight.
 gleaner of thousand sunsets around
 a world, and talk at the same time. I
 don't say there's nothing in it'-inter- rupt a planet to chew my food-throw planet on the floor and look for my
 hat Nations lunging through space to say good morning tos me, continents flashed around my thoughts, seas for the boundaries of my days delights the great God shining over all! And may He preserve me from ever reading a newspaper in ten minutes.
 q have spent as much time as any, one, think, in my day, first and last, , in feeling superior to- newspapers. | can remember when used to enjoy it very much-the feeling, mean. have spent whole half days at it-going up not good enough for me.
 "Now when take up a morning newspaper, half dread, half-delight, take 1t up softly. My whole being trembles in the balance before it. The whole procession of my soul, shabby, loveless, provincial, tawdry, is passed in review before it. It is the grand stand of the world. The vast and aw- full roll call of things I ought to be- the things I ought to 1ove--in the great world voice sweeps over me. It reaches its way through all my thoughts through the minutes of my days. Where is thy soul? Oh, where is thy soul?' the morning paper up and down its column calls to me. There are days that I ache with the echo of 1t. There are days when I dare not read it until the night. Then the voice that is in 1t grows gentle with the darkness-it may be-and is stilled with sleep. T am not saying it does not take a very intelligent man to read a newspa- per in ten minutes-squeeze planet at breakfast and drop 1t. think it does But I am inclined to think that the in telligent man who reads newspaper in ten minutes is exactly the same kind of intelligent man who could spend a week reading it if he wanted to, and not waste a minute of it. And he might want to. He simply reads a newspaper as he likes. He is not confined to one way. He does not read it in ten min- utes because he has a mere ten-minute mind, but because he merely has the ten minutes. Rapid reading and slow reading are both based, with such a man, on appreciation of the paper-and not upon narrow, literary, Boston, | public-library feeling of being superior to it.
 "The value of reading matter, like other matter, depends on what a man
 does with it. All that one needs, in or der not to waste time in general read ing; is a large, complete set of prin- ciples to stow things away in. Nothing
 really needs to be wasted. If one knows
 where everything belongs in ones
 mind-or tries to, if one takes the 1 trouble to put it there-reading a news
 paper is one of the most colossal, tre-
 mendous and boundless acts that can
 be performed by anyone in the whole
 course of human life.
 "1f there's any place where a man needs to have all his wits about him,
 to put things into-if there's any place where the next three inches can de-
 mand as much of a man as newspa- per-where is it? The moment he opens
 it he lays his soul open, exposes him.
 self to all sides of the world in a sec ond, and to several thousand years of
 the world at once.