i44 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



edition of some choice author. "A book of verses underneath the 

 bough " or whereever else you camp is a fitting companion. 



In urging this employment of spare fragments of time, we are not 

 forgetting the need which all have of recreation. Our bodies must of 

 course be rested when they are weary, and so must our minds. Time 

 spent in reading when you are too tired to read is not saved, but lost. 

 The most healthy person sometimes needs the fullest possible relief 

 from mental exercise, and that during the day. For all this it is true 

 that change of mental activity, as from our regular work to a delightful 

 book, affords mental rest of a most valuable order. If your dinner is 

 ten minutes late you need not take up Euclid or the " Principia." 

 Use Thackeray, or even a comic paper. 



A second precept toward utilizing one's reading opportunities is: 

 Carefully select your matter. Here comes up the very important ques- 

 tion, what to read. Answer: In the first place, negatively, it does not 

 pay to spend much time upon newspapers or upon ordinary magazines. 

 Not that one may not fish up from these great seas now and then a 

 pearl; but that the average time and labor cost of such pearls is too 

 great. Also eschew ordinary fiction and ordinary poetry, save now and 

 then an hour when the mental alimentary canal, lacking tone, can keep 

 down nothing but broth. Life is too short to read all that is truly 

 excellent ; it is certainly too short to read much of what is just passable. 



Eead more books and less periodical literature. A bad habit has 

 arisen in this matter. The great ability, along with the timeliness, of 

 many magazine pieces now, has had the unfortunate effect of turning 

 readers from board to paper covers. A new book we ignore because 

 Booh Notes or the Critic or the Dial or the Outlook or some other sheet 

 has had a review of it. But the best possible review of a book is no 

 substitute for the book. As well dine upon odors from a hotel kitchen. 

 Eead all the reviews that appeared upon Lecky's " History of England 

 in the Eighteenth Century " ; then take time and go through the work 

 itself. You will find it a new world. Equally great is the error men 

 make in reading so few old books. A few years ago it was found, by 

 questioning, that only one out of a class of a hundred and ten college 

 seniors knew anything about Milton's prose works. Many who con- 

 sider themselves fairly well read have never touched Bacon's " Essays " 

 or the " Pilgrim's Progress." Such as do read many books, among 

 them, too, books which came out before the Spanish War, often mis- 

 takenly avoid the most precious works because they are bulky. To 

 master Masson's " Life of Milton " or Spedding's " Life of Bacon " is 

 a liberal education. It is at once a wonder and a misfortune that so 

 few essays are read now. The rage is all for poetry instead. Colleges 

 and universities offer a hundred lectures on poetry to one on prose 

 belles lettres. So far as one can observe, the noble essays of Hume, 



