The independent-reporter. [volume] (Skowhegan, Me.) 1909-1955, 1923-11-29

personal acquaintances when he went
to Boston to see Holmes, Phillips.
Longfellow, Brooks and Emerson. A
little Maine girl was doing the same
thing when she called on Miss Alice
Longfellow.
While many of us cannot gain a
personal acquaintance with great
minds, we can do the next best thing,
and In some respects a better thing,
when We seek an intimate acquain-
lance with great books. For in great
books the best thoughts of the best
minds. lies securely recorded for all
the ages. Books preserve for us the
spirit of the great, the thoughts of
those geniuses who are Gods oeca-
sional gift to mankind; reveal to us
the best men in their best moods.
Books are tools of the mind. Like
machine, whose purpose Is to save
time and speed production, we accom-
plish in few hours with great book
what 1t took the author wearisome
years to achieve. Beside the COM
fort of our own fireside we can fol-
low Humboldt to the Andes, Living
stone to the Congo, Peary to the North
Pole. Experience is indeed the great
teacher, but experience supplemented
by books will teach young man more
in one year than experience alone will
teach him in twenty years.
Books help us to see. History is
not bunk" We must trace the
growth of institutions, compare race
with race, land with land. event with
event. Life is too short to get vision
from travel and conversation. We
need the great writer's to teach us
how to see. Thus Geike takes us in
to the secrest of the rocks; Maeter-
link reveals to US the intricate and
mysterious life of the bee; Shake
spears carries us into the depths of
Macbeth's facilitating and PREACHER
Gus soul; Wells or Van Loon shows
us the stages of mans tedious rise
from savagery to civilization. Here
lies the value of biography. Lives of
real folks, more interesting than the
fiction, teach us how to see life az
real men and women have lived it,
THE Americanization of Edward Box"
Lytton Strachey's Queen Victoria"
and Thayer's George Washington"
are books that every person, young or
old, should read and absorb.
Books stir the Imagination. After
all memory makes no discoveries In
this world. Reason has no creative
skill 1t is Imagination that is the
wonder-worker. Watts steam en-
CINE functioned in his mind long be-
fore it turned any factory wheel.
Daniel Webster saw his arguments in
the air long before his audience heard
his matchless words. And so every
new picture. every new, book, every
new law is first of all the magma
tons gift to man. Books like Rob-
inson's 1.-THE Mind in the Making" or
us to think for ourselves, to employ
truly creative thought.
We must exert care in the selection
OF books. SO vast is the production
of books every year that we nearly
founder in sea of printers ink.
We need to systematic our reading.
We should read for information, for
inspiration. for our profession, for
pleasure.
A years course In systematic read
ing would be good self-imposed task
for any of us. One book month,
twelve for the year, selected to make
progressive course in the study of
mankind would give pleasure and
profit to any thinking man or woman.
A YEARS READING
One book a month selected in order
from each of the following groups
will assure the reader progressive
course that will prove instructive, en-
PERTAINING and cultural:
Our Home-The Earth.
Geike: The Great Ice Age
Seeley: The Story of the Earth
Roberts,: The Earth's History
1.-THE Animal World
Maeterink: The Life of the Bee
Derieux: Animal Personalities