248 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



THE CHOICE OP BOOKS 



demands care and thought. Some few books are known the world over 

 as classics; about others there is substantial agreement that they are the 

 best of their time or of their kind. But even a classic may seem — nay, 

 may indeed be — unprofitable to one whose interest lies elsewhere. 

 "Read what you are interested in," is the best precept, for where there 

 is no interest there can be little profit. We should not forget, however, 

 that our present interest may not be for those things that are highest 

 and t»est, and hence we should strive in every way to cultivate our taste. 

 To be directed to what, in the opinion of competent judges, is really 

 highest and best, we must give some time to reading about books. 

 Guides to reading are multiplying on every hand and some of them are 

 well worth getting. (See short list at the end of this article.) 



COURSES OF READING. 



The Chautauqua Reading Circle, University Extension work, and simi- 

 lar movements owe much of their value and popularity to the fact that 

 they furnish good courses of reading, and also direct attention to topics 

 demanding especial study, and suggest methods of making the reading 

 most profitable. A few hints, suggestions, and questions, skillfully 

 designed to call attention to the central points, may prove of great value 

 to any reader, especially to one who has not had careful training in liter- 

 ary interpretation. Without such helps many a reader has failed to grasp 

 the inner meaning, the deeper significance of volumes that are full of 

 riches to one whose eyes have been trained to see. 



CLAIMS OF LITERATURE UPON THE FARMER. 



The farmer is endowed by nature with the same faculties, tastes and 

 interests as are other men. If others find interest and profit in biog- 

 raphy and history, in essays and poetry, in the novel and the drama, wh^ 

 may not the farmer find equal interest, equal profit? He cannot afford 

 to make of himself a mere muscular, money-making machine. He has 

 mind and soul, and should keep in touch with whatever can lead him to 

 a wider usefulness or a nobler manhood. If it is excellent to know about 

 beast and bird and plant, surely it is not less excellent to know about 

 man. Knowledge of the right conditions for plant growth may be coined 

 into dollars ; in a like manner, knowledge of the right conditions for man 

 growth may be coined into manhood, and who dares alfirm that character 

 is a less worthy ideal than wealth? Now literature is, in its broadest 

 sense, little else than a study of man. History and biography show us 

 what man has accomplished. The drama and the novel show us what 

 man is: his real character; his secret ambitions and hopes and fears; the 

 impulses that sway him, now here, now there; the motives that prompt 

 him, now to crime, now to a life of unremitting toil, now to deeds of 

 heroism and self-sacrifice. The essay takes for its task the discussion 

 of all problems affecting man's welfare; on many subjects it includes the 

 ripest product of man's thought. Poetry presents to us the finest 



