The Companionship of our fellow-beings is not confined to the living men
and women around us, but comes to us, through books, from all nations
and ages. Wise teachers stand ever ready to instruct us, gentle
moralists to console and strengthen us, poets to delight us. Scarce a
country village is so poor that there may not be found beneath its roofs
the printed words of more great men than ever lived at any one period of
the earth's history.
We are too apt to use books, as well as society, merely for our
amusement; to read the books that chance to fall into our hands, or to
associate with the persons we happen to meet with, and not stop to ask
ourselves if nothing better is within our reach. It may not be in our
power to associate with great living minds, but the mental wealth of the
past is within the reach of all. We boast much that we are a reading
people, but it may be well to inquire how intelligently we read. The
catalogues of books borrowed from our public libraries show, that, where
the readers of works of amusement are counted by hundreds, the readers
of instructive books are numbered by units. In conversation, it is not
uncommon to hear persons expressing indifference or dislike to whole
classes of books,--to hear Travels denounced as stupid, Biography as
tame, and History as heavy and dull. It does not seem to occur to the
mass of minds that any purpose beyond the amusement of the moment is to
be thought of in reading, or that any plan should be laid, or any
principles adopted, in the choice of books to be read.
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