Recreation | Page 4

to be one of those great books of all time dealing with great events or great thoughts of past generations. I mention Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" as an instance of one such book, which had an atmosphere of greatness into which one passed right out of the worries of party politics and official work. Such books take one away to another world where one finds not only pleasure, but rest. "I like large still books," Tennyson is reported to have said. And great books not only give pleasure and rest, but better perspective of the events of our own time. I must warn you that Gibbon has been called dull. It is alleged that Sheridan, a man of brilliant wit, said so, and when a friend reminded him that in a famous speech he had paid Gibbon the compliment of speaking of the "luminous page of Gibbon," Sheridan said he must have meant to say "voluminous." If you take the same view of Gibbon, find some other great author whom you do not find dull. There is a host of great writers to choose from. There are plenty of signposts to direct us to old books of interest and value. They have well-known names, and so they stand out and are known like great peaks in mountain ranges of the human intellect.
The second of my books would also be an old book, a novel which had been approved by successive generations. The third would be some modern book, whether serious or light, and in modern books the choice is not so easy. There are many that are excellent, but there are many in which we may find neither pleasure nor profit. If our leisure is short we have not much time to experiment. The less spare time we have, the more precious it is, and we do not want to waste any of it in experimenting with modern books which we do not find profitable. It is worth while to cultivate a few friends whose intelligence we can respect and whose taste is sympathetic and who read, and to get from them from time to time the names of modern books which they have read and found good. I have had too little time for reading, but that my advice may not be entirely academic I will recommend you, at any rate, one good modern novel. Its name is "The Bent Twig," the authoress is Dorothy Canfield, and I can tell you nothing except that she is an American, but the book seems to me one of the best pieces of work in novel writing that has happened to come under my own observation recently. There are others, no doubt, in plenty, and if you get half a dozen friends who are fond of reading each to recommend you one book as I have done, you will have provision for a little time to come.
To conclude my suggestions about reading I would urge this. Like all the best things in life, the recreation of reading needs a little planning. When we have a holiday in prospect we make plans beforehand so that when the time comes we may know exactly where we want to go, what we want to do, how the holiday is to be spent, and have all our preparations ready. If we do not do that the holiday finds us unprepared and the greater part of it is wasted. So with our spare time, our casual leisure. Do not let it find us unprepared. It is a good plan to make a list of books which either from our own thought, our own experience, or the recommendation of friends, we feel a desire to read. We should have one or two of these books always at hand, and have them in mind, too, as something which we are longing to read at the first opportunity. I think some people lose the habit and pleasure of reading because they do not take this trouble and make no plan, and when the spare evening or the long railway journey or the wet day comes it finds them without any book in anticipation, and they pick up a newspaper or a magazine, not because they specially want to read it, but because they have nothing present to their minds or at hand which they really care for. The habit of planning ahead is essential to real cultivation of the pleasure of reading, just as essential as planning is for sport or travel or games or any of the other pleasures of life. I know friends who are fond of sport. They choose a long time beforehand the river they will fish or the sort of shooting they will pursue. Another friend likes travel and plans months