?2 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 



art of reading is the art of investing life with 

 best qualifications for living. Books open new 

 worlds for conquest, they offer possibilities of 

 rare incentive. So many read aimlessly and 

 get nothing. So few read for knowledge and 

 culture and power. A book and its time mean 

 much, just how much who can tell ? Out of it 

 one may get mind-hunger appeased, heart in- 

 spiration to the full for struggles and achieve- 

 ments; or he may go over and over again the 

 realm of fiction, where passion and intrigue hold 

 high carnival, and charr and burn his sympa- 

 thies and only get cinders for his hours and 

 pains. A book is an opportunity. Oppor- 

 tunities are rare. They never repeat their 

 first offer. If ever they come again it is like 

 the offer of second growth timber, good, but 

 not first class. To take up a book without a 

 purpose is an opportunity lost for taking up a 

 book with a purpose. Purpose is the key to re- 

 sults; who will, may unlock and swing wide 

 open the portals that lead out into new worlds 

 of thought and feeling and action. 



It is the office of best literature to show the 

 meaning of life, and the meaning of life is not 

 only what it is but what I may be. To fathom 

 its meanings is the most universal of human 

 longings, the most passionate quest of the race 



