The Saint Paul globe., 1904-12-27
ABOUT READING BOOKS
VARIOUS PHASES OF OUR MEN
TAI DEVELOPMENT
Book With Green Cover Full of Pom
derous Thoughts of a Profound
Mind, couched in Words of Learned
Length

This department has struck a snag.
The snag in form is a book with a
green cover. and is entitled THE The
ory of the Leisure Class" written by
very learned person who may be be-
lever in the simple life. but is evil
IDENTIFY dead against simplicity in Ian
guage and encompasses his ideas
about with so many words that the
reader who knows what he is getting
al is indeed fortunate. Sometimes one
thinks it is just as we'll to have a mind
which is impressed by what it does not
understand. As rule nearly every
one goes through several phases in re-
gard to books. When you are very
young you hate to acknowledge that
there is anything you have not read
that is of those things which you
should have read.
The dreadful goneness of feeling
which is yours when a person says:
what, haven't you read Kenelm
Chillingly' or The Heir of Radcliffe"
in a shocked tone, then you hasten to
assure him that you have, mentally
deciding to read them the next day.
Also a very youthful phase of feeling
is to lack courage to say that you
have not liked some masterpiece which
not liking would place you beyond the
pale of the elect. Knowing nothing of
a famous book and saying so boldly
comes later. Then after you have
lived awhile longer and discovered
there is good deal of humbug in
everything, you reach a stage when
you have the courage to say you have
not read thus and so-and later still
you are not afraid to confess, as one
low-that he hated Shakespeare's
plays. OF course the latter is an eX-
treme case, quoted merely to show to
what extreme lengths courage of that
kind can go. But after awhile you
do acquire a sort of independence
about your reading; perhaps you have
come across an essay by Andrew Lang
called Books 1 Have Stuck H."
delightful thing which stiffens your
backbone as you read that in forming
his literary taste Mr.. Lang stuck in ali
the lovely books without which your lit
erary education is regarded as un-
finished, and that he has the most
complete sympathy with those per-
sons who have not read the works
which they should have read. After
digesting this, your emancipation is
complete and you can even support
the look of scorn given you by one of
the elect when you say you cannot
read George Meredith.
So when [ found the book with the
green cover l knew that some years
ago I would have been much more i'm
pressed, or at all events been more or
less afraid to say 1 wasn't, but now
its perusal is attended with pure de-
light. Here is a remark which is an
example of the profound style of the
writer: I'm the discussion of the
sporting temperament it has appeared
that the sense of an animistic propen-
sity in material things and events is
what affords the spiritual basis of the
sporting mans gambling habit
So far as concerns those tangible
psychological features with which
economic theory has to deal, the gam
bling spirit which pervades the sport
ing element shades off by insensible
gradations into that frame of mind
which finds qualification in devout OBJ
servances. AS seen from the point of
view of economic theory, the sporting
character shales off into the character
of a religious deVotee. 8" Now
the writer has laid no foundation for
that, but just says it suddenly, with
out any warning, and if ones literary
conscience had not gone through some
of the mental processes mentioned
above, one would, after this, be all in,
as the slang of the day goes. So it is
that while this department was at first
inclined to allow the green book to
worry it-not enough to spoil Christ
mas, however-but following illustrious
example and with the cheering
thought that there are others, it has
turned it with its face to the wall and
- decided to rise above it.