enters into the structure of their being-it is taken up and assimilated into the very substance of their living selves. Every paragraph in a newspaper with every fact which it records or truth which it illustrates, is turned to some permanent account and remains as a lasting acquisition.

But there are others who read only to lose and to forget. Facts and truths, words, and thoughts are alike evanescent. We shall not attempt to explain here the nature of these differences. We are concerned only to devise the remedy: we insist that those who labor under these difficulties should use special appliances to avoid or overcome them. But that upon which we insist most of all, is that what we read we should seek to make our own, only in the manner and after the measure of which we are capable. Each reader should follow the natural bent and aptitudes of his own individual nature. If we have not a good verbal memory, it is almost in vain that we seek to remember choice phrases and sentences, happy turns of expression, admirable bits of eloquent speech, or striking stanzas and lines of inspiring or moving poetry. We may read them again and again, we may admire them with increasing fervor, we may return to them with an ever augmented interest, but we shall make little progress in remembering them so as to be able to recite them. If we have a feeble capacity for the retention of dates and facts as such, unless they interest our feelings or illustrate principles, the utmost pains-taking will do little to help us to retain facts when isolated or uninteresting, or numbers when they signify nothing but so many figures. We do not advise a man laboring under these inaptitudes to fight against nature or to fall into a querulous, discouraged or fretful quarrel with himself, because, as he says, he cannot remember what he reads. Nor when we enjoin upon him to use special efforts to remember, do we intend that he shall be more interested in his efforts to remember than he is interested in what he is to remember.

We advise just the opposite. But we contend that when a man reads he should put himself into the most intimate intercourse with his author, so that all his energies of apprehension, judgment and feeling may be occupied with and aroused by what his author furnishes, whatever it may be. If repetition or review will aid him in this, as it often will, let him not disdain or neglect frequent reviews. If the use of the pen in brief or full notes, in catch-words or other symbols will aid him, let him not shrink from the drudgery of the pen and the common-place book. If he is aided to discern and retain the logical connections of an argument or a discourse by drawing them out in a complete skeleton or analysis, let him prosecute the dissection without flinching. If a re-survey of the parts will give him a comprehensive view of the method of the whole let him complete his analyses with the utmost care and arrange their products in a new and symmetrical order. But there is no charm or efficacy in such mechanism by itself. It is only valuable as a means to an end, and that end is to quicken the intellectual energies by arousing and holding the attention. It is by awakening and energizing the reason-by concentrating and arousing the feelings that it can serve any very useful purpose. To remember what we read we must make it our own: we must think with the author, rethinking his thoughts, following his facts, assenting to or rejecting his reasonings, and entering into the very spirit of his emotions and purposes.

CHAPTER V.

THE RELATIONS OF THE READER TO HIS AUTHOR.

THE considerations presented already as well as the fundamental conceptions of books and reading with which we set off in our search of rules and methods, enforce upon us the truth that effective reading depends most of all on the relations in which the reader finds himself, or into which he can bring himself, with respect to his author. If these relations are those of incongruity or of repellency, they will be more or less fatal to all profitable reading. The fault may be in the reader, or the fault may be in the author, or it may lie partly with the one and partly with the other, but if the fault exists, it will go far to defeat the best results which might otherwise follow. Accordingly, our interest in and our attention to what we read, and therefore our success in reading depend very largely on the authors whom we read. A book which is very suitable for one person may for this reason be entirely unfitted for another. The same book which is suitable at one time, or at a certain age, or with a certain degree of development or culture, may be entirely unsuitable to the same person in another mood, at another age, and after greater progress and culture. Thus the consideration of the manner in which we should read, in a certain sense depends upon what we read. The discussion of how we may read with effect, depends largely upon what we read, and involves the consideration of the principles and rules by which we should select our authors. Upon this topic we observe:

1. That in order to read with interest and attention we

should choose an author from whom we can gain something. We do not say from whom we can learn something, for we do not hold that it is the duty of all authors to teach something in the way of fact or argument in order to be useful or interesting. Many books serve to amuse and impress as well as to inform and convince. Those authors are as useful who enforce and inspire, as those who enlighten and instruct. The novel that leaves us with a glow of contentment and thankfulness, that inspires us with a warm resolve to struggle with an unequal lot or to be contented and cheerful under adverse fortune, that confirms our faith in goodness and our trust in God, may be quite as useful as the treatise which enforces some new principle in finance, the history which clears up some disputed question of fact, or the argument which sets forever at rest some dispute upon a point of public policy, or even the sermon which proves or enforces some theological truth. A tale that fills an invalid with cheerful thoughts or whiles away a weary hour with pleasant pictures, is as useful as the most formal demonstration of a questioned proposition. A poem that elevates the soul, excites the imagination, kindles the emotions, and rouses the aspirations may be worth more to myriads of readers than scores of so-called books of fact and argument, or even of books of exhortation and edification.

But with this enlarged conception of the kind and variety of profit which we may expect from an author, we are more completely justified in requiring of every author who solicits our attention: whether he has anything to give us, i. e., whether we shall gain anything by reading his book. If he can neither teach us anything which we do not know, nor convince us of anything of which we are in doubt, nor strengthen our faith in what we already receive, nor set old truths in new lights, nor warm our feelings into noble earnestness, nor entertain us with whole

some jokes nor excite us to honest laughter, then he is not the man and his is not the book for us. Whatever he and his book may be to others, they have no claims upon us, and we should be quite ready to show both the door. Stupid commonplace, pretentious twaddle, weak sentimentalism, feeble reasoning, confused narrative, silly novels, ambitious poetry, are not to be read except on compulsion, as in a desperately rainy day, in a lonesome cabin, when a last year's almanac or a thrice-conned newspaper have yielded up their last returns of nutriment and succulence. But in such a case the storm must forbid a walk, and there should be not even an intelligent spaniel or a playful kitten to furnish society. A stupid or senseless book is thrice as stupifying as a stupid man. A vain, ignorant and ambitious piece of writing has none of those redeeming features which a humane and charitable spirit will find in a vain, ignorant and ambitious person. If then I am to read anything with interest, I must be introduced to an author who can do me some good. If his book can teach or convince or ennoble or amuse me, then it may be reasonably expected that I should be aroused to an interested and wakeful attention. The conditio sine qua non of earnest interest in reading is to find something which is worth the reading. Said a youngster to a humorous old New England preacher, "I observe that your parishioners listen very attentively to your preaching." "I uniformly aim to give them something which is worth attending to," was the curt reply. "The man whom I like to converse with above all others," said Daniel Webster, "is the man who can teach me something." If every reader would estimate, select and use his books by this rule, there would be far less listless, lazy and profitless reading than there is. What would befall large portions of many of our newspapers, and what use could possibly be applied to much of