The mirror. (Stillwater, Minn.) 1894-1925, 1911-10-19
BOOKS.

Have you ever rightly consid-
erred what the mere ability to read
meansg That t~is the key which
admits us to the whole world of
thought and fancy and magma
tiong To the company of saint
and sage, Of the Wisest and the
wittiest at their wisest and Wittiest
moment? That it enables us to
see with the keenest eyes, hear
with the finest ears, and listen to
the sweetest voices of all time?
More than that, it annihilates time
and space for us; it reviews for us
without a miracle the Age of Won
der; endowing us with the shoes of
sWiftness and the cap of darkness,
so that we walk invisible like Fern
seed, ia fairy tale) and witness un-
harmed the plague at Athens, or
Florence, or London; accompany
Caesar on his marches, OF look in
on Catiline in council with his fell
low conspirators, or Guy Fawkes
in the cellar of st. Stephens. We
often hear of people who will de-
scend to any survility, submit to
any insult, for the sake Of getting
themselves or their children into
what is euphemistically called good
society. Did it ever occur to them
that there is a select society Of all
the centuries to which they and
theirs can be admitted for the ask
ing, a society too, which will not
involve them in ruinous expense,
and still more ruinous waste of
time and health and facultiesg
Among books, certainly there is.
from the best to the worst. from
Plato to lola; and the first lesson
in reading we'll is that which
teaches US to distinguish between
literature and merely printed mat
ter. The choice lies wholly with
ourselves. We have the kew put
into our hands; shall we unlock
the pantry or the oratoryg There
is choice of books as in friends.
and the mind sinks or, rises to the
level of its habitual society, is sub
dued, as Shakespeare says of the
dyer's hand, to what it works in.
lSonnet oxI). Cato's advice, cum
bonis ambula, (consort with the
good, is quite as true if we extend
It to books, for they to insensibly
give away their own nature to the
mind that converses with them.
They either beckon upwards orl
drag down.
Every book we read may be
made a round in the ever-lengthen-
ing ladder by which we climb to-
knowledge, and to that temper
ance and serenity of mind which,
IS it is the ripest fruit of Wisdom, |
IS also the sweetest. But this can
be only if we read such books as
make us think, and read them in
such a way as helps them to do SO,
hat is by endeavoring to judge
hem, and thus to make them AM
exercise rather than a relaxation Of
he mind. Desultory reading, ex-
,ept as conscious pastime, hebe-
,ates the brain and slackens the
oowstrings of Will. It commune
,ates as little intelligence as the
messages that run along q telegraph
wire to birds that perch on it. Few
men learn the highest use of books.
After lifelong study many al
nan discovers too late that to hayel
lad the phil osopher's stone ayailed
lothing without the philosopher tol
Use it. Many scholarly life,
tretched like talking wire to I,
ring the wisdom Of antiquity intol
with the present.
an at last yield us no better news /,
han the true accent Of Greek
'erse, or the translation of some T,
ilthy nothing scrawled on theI
walls of brothel of some Pompe-
IN idler. And it is certainly true !,
hat the material of thought reacts
pom the thought itself. Shake Il
peare himself would have been s
commonplace had he been pad
ocked in thinly-shaven yocabu-
sry. f
a man Il lxnown no fI,o vrn.