Year: 1869

In an article on show to Read in the
October number Of Our Young Folk, the
Rev. Edward Everett Hale says: .
Whether to copy much from books or
nots That Is question, ,-and the an
swer iss-" That depends" If you have
but few books, and much time and paper
and ink and If you are likely to have
fewer books, why, nothing Is nicer and
better than to make for use in later life
good extract-books to your own taste, and
for your own purposes. But If you own
your books, or are likely TO have them at
command, time is short, and the time
spent in copying would probably be better
spent in reading. There are some very diff
fnsive books, difficult because diffusive, of
which it is well to write close digests if
you are really studying them. When we
read John Locke, for instance, we had to
make abstracts, and we used to stint our
selves to q line for one of his chatty sec


TONS That was good practice for writing,


and we remember what was In the sections


to this hour. Hyou copy, make first-rate


index to your extracts. They sell books


prepared for the purpose. but you may
Just as well make your own.


You see am not contemplating any


very rapid or slap-dash work. You may


put that on your novels, or books of amuse-


ment If you choose, and win not be very


cross about it; but for the books of i'm


provement, / want you to improve by read


ing them. Do not "gobble" them up 50


that five years hence you shall not know


whether you have read them or not.


What I advise seems slow to you,


but If you viii, any of you, make or find


two hours q day to read in this fashion,


you win be one day accomplished men or


women. Very few professional men,


known to me, get 90 much time as that for
careful and systematic reading. If any


boy or girl wants really to know what
comes OF such reading, wish he would
read the life of my friend George Liver
more, which our friend Charles Deane has
Just now written for the Historical Society
of Massachusetts,. There was young
man, who when he was boy in a store
began his systematic reading. He never
LEFT active and laborious business; but
when he died, he was one of the accom-
plished historical scholars Of America. He
had no superior in his special lines sof
study he was q recognized authority and
leader among men who had given their
lives to scholarship. stt -s,,


I have not room to copy it here, but


wish any Of you would turn to letter of
Frederick Robertson's, near the end of the
second volume of his letters, where he
speaks of this very matter. He says he
read, when he was at Oxford, but sixteen
books with his tutors. But he read them
80 that they became part of himself, " as
the iron enters q mans blood" And they
were books by sixteen Of the men who
have been leaders OF the world. No bad
thing, dear Stephen, TO have in your blood
and brain and bone, the vitalizing element
that was in the lives of such men.


Z / need not ask you to look forward 90
far as to the end of a life as long as Mr..
George Livermore's, and as successful.
Without asking that, l will say again,
what implied in August, that any person
who will take any special subject Of de-
tail and in a well ll-provided library will
work steadily on that little subject for a
fortnight, Will at the end of the fortnight
probably know more of that detail than
anybody in the country knows. If you
viii study by subjects for the truth, you
have the satisfaction of knowing that the
ground is soon very nearly all your own.
do not pretend that books are every
thing. / may have occasion some day to
teach some Of you allow to Observe" and
then shall say come very hard things
about people who keep their books so
close before their eyes that they cannot
see Gods world, nor their fellowmen and
women. But books rightly used are soci-
ETY.. Good books are the best society;
better than is possible without them, in
any one place, or in any one time. To
know how TO use them wisely and well,
is to know how to make Shakespeare and
Milton and Theodore Hook and Thomas
Hood step out from the side Of your room,
at your will, sit down at your fire, and
talk with you for an hour. 1 have no
such society at hand, as l write these
words, except by such magic.