The Guide to Reading | Page 2

make his work and so show what the man is.
Every home ought to have some books that are tools and the children
should be taught how to use them. There should be at least an atlas, a
dictionary, and an encyclopædia. If in the evening when the family talk
about the war in the Balkans the father gets out the atlas and the
children look to see where Roumania and Bulgaria and Greece and
Constantinople and the Dardanelles are on the map, they will learn
more of real geography in half an hour than they will learn in a week of
school study concerning countries in which they have no interest.
When there is reading aloud in the family circle, if every unfamiliar
word is looked up in a dictionary, which should always lie easily
accessible upon the table, they will get unconsciously a widening of
their vocabulary and a knowledge of the use of English which will be
an invaluable supplement to the work of their teacher of English in the
school. As to cyclopædias they are of all sizes from the little six-
volumed cyclopædia in the Everyman's Library to the twenty-nine
volumed Encyclopædia Britannica, and from the general cyclopædia
with more or less full information on every conceivable topic to the
more distinctive family cyclopædia which covers the life of the
household. Where there are children in the family the cyclopædia
which covers the field they are most apt to be interested in--such as
"The Library of Work & Play" or "The Guide Series" to biography,
music, pictures, etc. --is the best one to begin with. After they have

learned to go to it for information which they want, they will desire a
more general cyclopædia because their wants have increased and
broadened.
So much for books as ornaments and as tools. Certainly not less
important, if comparisons can be made I am inclined to say more
important, is their usefulness as friends.
In Smith College this distinction is marked by the College authorities in
an interesting and valuable manner. In the library building there is a
room for study. It is furnished with a number of plain oak or walnut
tables and with chairs which do not invite to repose. There are
librarians present to get from the stacks the special books which the
student needs. The room is barren of ornament. Each student is hard at
--work examining, comparing, collating. She is to be called on
to-morrow in class to tell what she has learned, or next week to hand in
a thesis the product of her study. All eyes are intent upon the allotted
task; no one looks up to see you when you enter. In the same building
is another room which I will call The Lounge, though I think it bears a
different name. The books are upon shelves around the wall and all are
within easy reach. Many of them are fine editions. A wood fire is
burning in the great fireplace. The room is furnished with sofas and
easy chairs. No one is at work. No one is talking. No! but they are
listening--listening to authors whose voices have long since been silent
in death.
In every home there ought to be books that are friends. In every day, at
least in every week, there ought to be some time which can be spent in
cultivating their friendship. This is reading, and reading is very
different from study.
The student has been at work all the morning with his tools. He has
been studying a question of Constitutional Law: What are the powers
of the President of the United States? He has examined the Constitution;
then Willoughby or Watson on the Constitution; then he turns to The
Federalist; then perhaps to the Constitutional debates, or to the histories,
such as Von Holst's Constitutional History of the United States, or to
treatises, such as Bryce's American Commonwealth. He compares the

different opinions, weighs them, deliberates, endeavors to reach a
decision. Wearied with his morning pursuit of truth through a maze of
conflicting theories, he puts his tools by and goes to dinner. In the
evening he sits down in the same library for an hour with his friends.
He selects his friend according to his mood. Macaulay carries him back
across the centuries and he lives for an hour with The Puritans or with
Dr. Samuel Johnson. Carlyle carries him unharmed for an hour through
the exciting scenes of the French Revolution; or he chuckles over the
caustic humor of Thackeray's semi-caricatures of English snobs. With
Jonathan Swift as a guide he travels with Gulliver into no-man's land
and visits Lilliput or Brobdingnag; or Oliver Goldsmith enables him to
forget the strenuous life of America by taking him to "The Deserted
Village."