Books and Culture | Page 4

Arnold has put the same truth
into words which touch the subject in hand still more closely: "The plea
that this or that man has no time for culture will vanish as soon as we
desire culture so much that we begin to examine seriously into our
present use of time." It is no exaggeration to say that the mass of men
give to unplanned and desultory reading of books and newspapers an
amount of time which, if intelligently and thoughtfully given to the best
books, would secure, in the long run, the best fruits of culture.
There is no magic about this process of enriching one's self by
absorbing the best books; it is simply a matter of sound habits patiently
formed and persistently kept up. Making the most of one's time is the
first of these habits; utilising the spare hours, the unemployed minutes,
no less than those longer periods which the more fortunate enjoy. To
"take time by the forelock" in this way, however, one must have his
book at hand when the precious minute arrives. There must be no
fumbling for the right volume; no waste of time because one is
uncertain what to take up next. The waste of opportunity which leaves
so many people intellectually barren who ought to be intellectually rich,
is due to neglect to decide in advance what direction one's reading shall
take, and neglect to keep the book of the moment close at hand. The
biographer of Lucy Larcom tells us that the aspiring girl pinned all
manner of selections of prose and verse which she wished to learn at
the sides of the window beside which her loom was placed; and in this
way, in the intervals of work, she familiarised herself with a great deal
of good literature. A certain man, now widely known, spent his
boyhood on a farm, and largely educated himself. He learned the
rudiments of Latin in the evening, and carried on his study during
working hours by pinning ten lines from Virgil on his plough,--a
method of refreshment much superior to that which Homer furnished
the ploughman in the well-known passage in the description of the
shield. These are extreme cases, but they are capital illustrations of the
immense power of enrichment which is inherent in fragments of time
pieced together by intelligent purpose and persistent habit.

This faculty of draining all the rivulets of knowledge by the way was
strikingly developed by a man of surpassing eloquence and tireless
activity. He was never a methodical student in the sense of following
rigidly a single line of study, but he habitually fed himself with any
kind of knowledge which was at hand. If books were at his elbow, he
read them; if pictures, engravings, gems were within reach, he studied
them; if nature was within walking distance, he watched nature; if men
were about him, he learned the secrets of their temperaments, tastes,
and skills; if he were on shipboard, he knew the dialect of the vessel in
the briefest possible time; if he travelled by stage, he sat with the driver
and learned all about the route, the country, the people, and the art of
his companion; if he had a spare hour in a village in which there was a
manufactory, he went through it with keen eyes and learned the
mechanical processes used in it. "Shall I tell you the secret of the true
scholar?" says Emerson. "It is this: every man I meet is my master in
some point, and in that I learn of him."
The man who is bent on getting the most out of life in order that he
may make his own nature rich and productive will learn to free himself
largely from dependence on conditions. The power of concentration
which issues from a resolute purpose, and is confirmed by habits
formed to give that purpose effectiveness, is of more value than
undisturbed hours and the solitude of a library; it is of more value
because it takes the place of things which cannot always be at
command. To learn how to treat the odds and ends of hours so that they
constitute, for practical purposes, an unbroken duration of time, is to
emancipate one's self from dependence on particular times, and to
appropriate all time to one's use; and in like manner to accustom one's
self to make use of all places, however thronged and public, as if they
were private and secluded, is to free one's self from bondage to a
particular locality, or to surroundings specially chosen for the purpose.
Those who have abundance of leisure to spend in their libraries are
beyond the need of suggestions as to the use of time and place; but
those whose culture must be secured incidentally,