Letters to a Daughter and A Little Sermon to School Girls | Page 9

main source of knowledge of the more important events that are going on in the world is the daily or weekly newspaper; and yet there is scarcely any reading so utterly demoralizing to good mental habits as the ordinary daily paper. More than three-fourths of the matter printed in the "great city dailies" is not only of no use to anyone, but it is a positive damage to habits of mental application to read it. It is a waste of time even to undertake to sift the important from the unimportant. The most that any earnest person should attempt to do with a daily paper is to glance over the headlines which give the gist of the news, and then to read such editorial comments as enable the reader to understand the more important events and affairs that are transpiring in the world so that reference to them in conversation would be intelligent and intelligible. But if one should never see a daily paper, yet should every week carefully read a digest of news prepared for a good weekly paper, one would be thoroughly furnished with all necessary knowledge of contemporaneous events, and the time thus saved from daily papers could be profitably employed in other reading.
The field of literature is now so vast that no one can hope to be well acquainted with more than a small portion of it. Yet every well-informed young person should know the general character of the principal writers since the time of Shakespere, even though one should never read their works. You may remember how, in the recently finished novel of "The Rise of Silas Lapham," the novelist, with a few sentences, shows how ridiculous a really beautiful and amiable girl with a high-school education may make herself in conversation by her lack of knowledge of standard literature. She was telling a young gentleman where the book-shelves were to be in the splendid new house being built by her father, and suggesting that the shelves would look nice if the books had nice bindings.
"'Of course, I presume,' said Irene, thoughtfully, 'we shall have to have Gibbon.'
"'If you want to read him,' said Corey, with a laugh of sympathy for an imaginable joke.
"'We had a good deal about him in school. I believe we had one of his books. Mine's lost, but Pen will remember.'
"The young man looked at her, and then said seriously, 'You'll want Green, of course, and Motley, and Parkman.'
"'Yes. What kind of writers are they?'
"'They're historians, too.'
"'Oh, yes; I remember now. That's what Gibbon was. Is it Gibbon or Gibbons?'
"The young man decided the point with apparently superfluous delicacy. 'Gibbon, I think.'
"'There used to be so many of them,' said Irene, gaily. 'I used to get them mixed up with each other, and I couldn't tell them from the poets. Should you want to have poetry?'
"'Yes. I suppose some edition of the English poets.'
"'We don't any of us like poetry. Do you like it?'
"'I'm afraid I don't, very much,' Corey owned. 'But of course there was a time when Tennyson was a great deal more to me than he is now.'
"'We had something about him at school, too. I think I remember the name. I think we ought to have all the American poets.'
"'Well, not all. Five or six of the best; you want Longfellow, and Bryant, and Whittier, and Emerson, and Lowell.'
"'And Shakespere,' she added. 'Don't you like Shakespere's plays?... We had ever so much about Shakespere. Weren't you perfectly astonished when you found out how many other plays there were of his? I always thought there was nothing but "Hamlet," and "Romeo and Juliet," and "Macbeth," and "Richard III.," and "King Lear," and that one that Robson and Crane have--oh, yes, "Comedy of Errors!"'"
So you see how ridiculous this young girl, by the betrayal of such ignorance, made herself in conversation with a cultured young gentleman whose good opinion she was most anxious to win. And yet, to talk too much about books is not well; it often marks the pedantic and egotistic character. It is safe to say that unless one happens to meet a very congenial mind among conversers in general society, to introduce the subject of books is liable to be misconstrued. It is not very long since another popular modern novelist held up to scorn and ridicule the young woman whose particular ambition seemed to be to let society know what an immense number of books she had been reading. Nevertheless, one must have a good groundwork of knowledge of books in order to avoid mistakes such as poor Irene made in talking with young Corey.
Directions and suggestions for aiding young people to become agreeable and pleasant conversers must necessarily be mainly negative. Taken for granted that a young person possesses animation good sense,