694 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



"Twinkle, twinkle, little star, 

 How I wonder what you are. 

 Up above the world so high, 

 Like a diamond in the sky." 



This is a quotation that most every child has heard and can repeat 

 and really what child has not been made better and his thoughts of things 

 made higher and brighter by those words. 



There should be two objects in view in reading: intellectually, morally 

 and indirectly physically. But how can reading give these practical requi- 

 sites. I answer it can. It does and even more. It is in short that 

 which distinguishes the classic from the average scholar. It brings a 

 person in contact with the best minds of the past and present. You lis- 

 ten to the voice of learning that has been accumulating during the ages; 

 you live in a higher atmosphere and under purer laws. The pen that 

 is chrystalizing the beautiful thoughts of the present will be on the printed 

 page tomorrow. The admonitions of the poet and sage come to us through 

 reading. 



We may not know the complete worth of Dante, but who has not 

 paused when he read, "He who enters here leaves all hope behind." Lit- 

 erature gives us the key that will unlock the hidden treasures of the 



authors and the books will open the temple of learning that contains the 

 priceless treasure. It will open the word palaces of the language that 

 holds the thought imprisoned within their lettered walls. It will open the 

 vestibule doors to the marbled halls of history. It will open the delicate 

 casket of the flower and the leaf and reveal to the mind the secret thoughts 

 that were imprisoned there at creation's morn. It will open the stone 

 vaulted libraries of the rocks and the hills and bring to light the biog- 

 raphy of the earth writen without hands upon the marble and the clay. 

 It will open the mind and heart to that wisdom which the noblest of 

 prophets and poets say cannot be gotten for gold; neither shall silver be 

 weighed as the price thereof. 



Holmes says: "One story intellects, two story interrects, three story 

 interrects, with sky light. All fact collectors who have no aim beyond 

 their facts are one story men. Two story men compare reason, generalize, 

 using the labors of the fact collectors, as well as their own. Three story 

 men idealize, imagine, predict; their best illumination comes from above 

 through the sky light." 



I have partly spoken in regard to its intellectual advantages but what 

 of the physical. Right thoughts give right actions and right actions be- 

 come habits and correct habits are conducive to proper physical develop- 

 ment. Again we should use the gems of literature in quotation. An apt 

 quotation is as good as an original remark, says one. Shakespeare gives 

 us a lesson on opportunity in Julius Caesar. 



"There is a tide in the affairs of men 

 Which taken at the Flood leads on to Fortune 

 Omitted all the voyage of their life 

 Is bound in shallows and in miseries." 



