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

best current literature as may be obtained from the
regular reading of one or two of the standard monthly magazines.
And here it may help you if I particularize a little in regard to a
knowledge of important events of the day and also of general and
current literature. Of course the 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