516 APPENDIX F 



another time I took Morris's translations of various Norse Sagas, includ- 

 ing the Heimskringla, and liked them so much that I then incautiously 

 took his translation of Beowulf, only to find that while it had undoubtedly 

 been translated out of Anglo-Saxon, it had not been translated into Eng- 

 lish, but merely into a language bearing a specious resemblance thereto. 

 Once I took Sutherland's "History of the Growth of the Moral Instinct;" 

 but I did not often take scientific books, simply because as yet scientific 

 books rarely have literary value. Of course a really good scientific book 

 should be as interesting to read as any other good book; and the volume 

 in question was taken because it fulfilled this requirement, its eminent 

 Australian author being not only a learned but a brilliant man. 



I as emphatically object to nothing but heavy reading as I do to nothing 

 but light reading all that is indispensable being that the heavy and the 

 light reading alike shall be both interesting and wholesome. So I have 

 always carried novels with me, including, as a rule, some by living au- 

 thors, but (unless I had every confidence in the author) only if I had 

 already read the book. Among many, I remember offhand a few such 

 as "The Virginian," "Lin McLean," "Puck of Pook's Hill," "Uncle 

 Remus," "Aaron of the Wild Woods," "Letters of a Self-made Mer- 

 chant to His Son," "Many Cargoes," "The Gentleman from Indiana," 

 "David Harum," "The Crisis," "The Silent Places," "Marse Chan," 

 "Soapy Sponge's Sporting Tour," "All on the Irish Shore," "The Blazed 

 Trail," "Stratagems and Spoils," "Knights in Fustian," "Selma," 

 "The Taskmasters," Edith Wyatt's "Every Man to His Humor," the 

 novels and stories of Octave Thanet I wish I could remember more of 

 them, for personally I have certainly profited as much by reading really 

 good and interesting novels and stories as by reading anything else, 

 and from the contemporary ones I have often reached, as in no other way 

 I could have reached, an understanding of how real people feel in certain 

 country districts, and in certain regions of great cities like Chicago and 

 New York. 



Of course I also generally take out some of the novels of those great 

 writers of the past whom one can read over and over again; and occasion- 

 ally one by some writer who was not great like "The Semi-attached 

 Couple," a charming little early- Victorian or pre-Victorian tale which 

 I suppose other people cannot like as I do, or else it would be reprinted. 



Above all, let me insist that the books which I have taken were and 

 could only be a tiny fraction of those for which I cared and which I con- 



