The Guide to Reading

The Guide to Reading
by
Edited by Dr. Lyman Abbott,
Asa Don Dickenson, and Others

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Title: The Guide to Reading The Pocket University Volume XXIII

Author: Edited by Dr. Lyman Abbott, Asa Don Dickenson, and Others
Release Date: December, 2004 [EBook #7167] [Yes, we are more than
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THE POCKET UNIVERSITY VOLUME XXIII
THE GUIDE TO READING
EDITED BY DR. LYMAN ABBOTT, ASA DON DICKINSON AND
OTHERS

CONTENTS
BOOKS FOR STUDY AND READING By Lyman Abbott
THE PURPOSE OF READING By John Macy
How TO GET THE BEST Out OF BOOKS By Richard Le Gallienne
THE GUIDE TO DAILY READING By Asa Don Dickinson

GENERAL INDEX OF AUTHORS
GENERAL INDEX OF TITLES

THE POCKET UNIVERSITY Books for Study and Reading BY
LYMAN ABBOTT
There are three services which books may render in the home: they
may be ornaments, tools, or friends.
I was told a few years ago the following story which is worth retelling
as an illustration of the use of books as ornaments. A millionaire who
had one house in the city, one in the mountains, and one in the South,
wished to build a fourth house on the seashore. A house ought to have a
library. Therefore this new house was to have a library. When the
house was finished he found the library shelves had been made so
shallow that they would not take books of an ordinary size. His
architect proposed to change the bookshelves. The millionaire did not
wish the change made, but told his architect to buy fine bindings of
classical books and glue them into the shelves. The architect on making
inquiries discovered that the bindings would cost more than slightly
shop-worn editions of the books themselves. So the books were bought,
cut in two from top to bottom about in the middle, one half thrown
away, and the other half replaced upon the shelves that the handsome
backs presented the same appearance they would have presented if the
entire book had been there. Then the glass doors were locked, the key
to the glass doors lost, and sofas and chairs and tables put against them.
Thus the millionaire has his library furnished with handsome bindings
and these I may add are quite adequate for all the use which he wishes
to make of them.
This is a rather extreme case of the use of books as ornaments, but it
illustrates in a bizarre way what is a not uncommon use. There is this to
be said for that illiterate millionaire: well-bound books are excellent
ornaments. No decoration with wall paper or fresco can make a parlor
as attractive as it can be made with low bookshelves filled with works

of standard authors and leaving room above for statuary, or pictures, or
the inexpensive decoration of flowers picked from one's own garden. I
am inclined to think that the most attractive parlor I have ever visited is
that of a bookish friend whose walls are thus furnished with what not
only delights the eye, but silently invites the mind to an inspiring
companionship.
More important practically than their use as ornaments is the use of
books as tools. Every professional man needs his special tools--the
lawyer his law books, the doctor his medical books, the minister his
theological treatises and his Biblical helps. I can always tell when I go
into a clergyman's study by looking at his books whether he is living in
the Twentieth Century or in the Eighteenth. Tools do not make the man,
but they