Part 2 (1/2)
The daily selections can in most cases be read in from fifteen minutes to half an hour, and Dr. Eliot, President Emeritus of Harvard, has said that fifteen minutes a day devoted to good literature will give every man the essentials of a liberal education. If time can be found between breakfast and the work-hours for these few minutes of reading, one will receive more benefit than if it is done during the somnolent period which follows the day's work and dinner. It is a mistake, however, to read before breakfast. Eyes and stomach are too closely related to permit of this.
Happy is he who can read these books in company with a sympathetic companion. His enjoyment of the treasure they contain will be doubled.
One final hint--when reading for something besides pastime, get in the habit of referring when necessary to dictionary, encyclopaedia, and atlas. If on the subway or a railway train, jot down a memorandum of the query on the flyleaf, and look up the answer at the first opportunity.
ASA DON d.i.c.kINSON.
There is no business, no avocation whatever, which will not permit a man, who has the inclination, to give a little time, every day, to study.
--DANIEL WYTTENBACH.
JANUARY 1ST TO 7TH
1st. I. Franklin's Rules of Conduct, 6-Pt. II: 86-101 II. Longfellow's Psalm of Life, 14:247-248 III. Bryant's Thanatopsis, 15:18-20 IV. Lowell's To the Future, 13:164-167
2nd. I. Arnold's Self Dependence, 14:273-274 II. Adams's Cold Wave of 32 B. C., 9-Pt. I:146 III. Thomas's Frost To-night, 12:343
3rd. TOMa.s.sO SALVINI, b. 1 Ja. 1829; d. 1 Ja. 1916 I. Toma.s.so Salvini, 17-II:80-108
4th. I. Extracts from Thackeray's Book of Sn.o.bs, 1-Pt. I:3-37
5th. I. Ruskin's Venice, 1-Pt. II:73-88 II. St. Marks, 1-Pt. II:91-100
6th. I. Shakespeare's Blow, Blow Thou Winter Wind, 12:256-257 II. Messenger's A Winter Wish, 12:259-261 III. Emerson's The Snow Storm, 14:93-94 IV. Thackeray's Nil Nisi Bonum, l-Pt. I:130-143
7th. I. Adams's Ballad of the Thoughtless Waiter, 9-Pt. I:147 II. Us Poets, 9-Pt. I:148 III. Spenser's Amoretti, 13:177
No book that will not improve by repeated readings deserves to be read at all.
--THOMAS CARLYLE.
JANUARY 8TH TO 14th
8th. I. Fred Trover's Little Iron-clad, 7-Pt. II:82-105
9th. I. Kipling's The Man Who Would Be King, 21-Pt. II:1-56
10th. I. Carlyle's Boswell's Life of Johnson, 2-Pt. I: 32-78
11th. I ALEXANDER HAMILTON, b. II Ja. 1757 Alexander Hamilton, 16-Pt. I:71-91
12th. I. Macaulay's Dr. Samuel Johnson, His Biographer, 2-Pt. II:30-39 II. The Puritans, 2-Pt. II:23-29
13th. I. EDMUND SPENSER, d, 16 Ja. 1599 Prothalamion, 13:13-20
14th. I. Hawthorne's Dr. Heidegger's Experiment, 3-Pt. I:3-19