Chapter 82
Edward Everett Hale's "Man without a Country" will be read as long as the American flag flies.
Hawthorne's "Mosses from an Old Manse" are stories of unique interest, and "The Scarlet Letter" is known to all well-read people.
Of Rudyard Kipling, read "Kim," and "The Man Who Would be King."
Pierre Loti's "Iceland Fisherman" is translated by A. F. de Koven.
McClurg, $1.00.
S. Weir Mitch.e.l.l's "Hugh Wynne" sold 125,000 copies.
Thomas Nelson Page's "Gordon Keith" sold 200,000 copies.
If you read only one of Walter Scott's novels, take "Ivanhoe," or "The Talisman." Five more of those most read are likely to follow.
Henryk Sienkiewicz's "Quo Vadis" is most notable.
Robert L. Stevenson's "Treasure Island," and "Doctor Jekyll and Mr.
Hyde," and "The Merry Men and Other Tales," are fair examples of the charm and insight of this author.
He who reads Frank Stockton's "Rudder Grange" is likely to read more of this author's books.
Mrs. H. B. Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin" is still one of the great stories of the world.
Of Mark Twain, "Huckleberry Finn," "The Innocents Abroad," and the "Story of Joan of Arc" are representative volumes.
Miss Warner's "Wide, Wide World" is unique in American fiction.
John Watson's "Beside the Bonnie Briar Bush," sold 200,000 copies in America.
Lew Wallace's "Ben Hur" is the greatest of scriptural romances.
Thirty-eight books by twenty-eight authors. It would have been easier to name a hundred authors and two hundred books.
I will add from "The Critic" a list whose sales have reached six figures:--
_Books of Every-day Life_
"David Harum," by Westcott.............. 727,000 "Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch," by Alice Hegan Rice 345,000 "The Virginian," by Owen Wister........... 250,000 "Lovey Mary," by Alice Hegan Rice.......... 188,000 "The Birds' Christmas Carol," by Mrs. Wiggin..... 100,000 "The Story of Patsy," by Mrs. Wiggin......... 100,000 "The Leopard's Spots," by Thomas G. Dixon, Jr.... 125,000
_Romantic_
"Richard Carvel," by Winston Churchill........ 400,000 "The Crisis," by Winston Churchill.......... 400,000 "Graustark," by G. B. McCutcheon........... 300,000 "The Eternal City," by Hall Caine.......... 175,000 "Dorothy Vernon," by Charles Major.......... 150,000 "The Manxman," by Hall Caine............. 113,000 "When Knighthood Was in Flower," by Charles
CHAPTER LXIV
READING A SPUR TO AMBITION
The great use in reading is for self-discovery. Inspirational, character-making, life-shaping books are the main thing.
Cotton Mather's "Essay to Do Good" influenced the whole career of Benjamin Franklin.
There are books that have raised the ideals and materially influenced entire nations.
Who can estimate the value of books that spur ambition, that awaken slumbering possibilities?
Are we ambitious to a.s.sociate with people who inspire us to n.o.bler deeds? Let us then read uplifting books, which stir us to make the most of ourselves.
We all know how completely changed we sometimes are after reading a book which has taken a strong, vigorous hold upon us.
Thousands of people have found themselves through the reading of some book, which has opened the door within them and given them the first glimpse of their possibilities. I know men and women whose whole lives have been molded, the entire trend of their careers completely changed, uplifted beyond their dreams by the books they have read.
When Senator Petters of Alabama went to California on horseback in 1849, he took with him a Bible, Shakespeare, and Burns's poems. He said that those books read and thought about, on the great plains, forever after spoiled him for reading poorer books. "The silence, the solitude," he said, "and the strange flickering light of the camp fire, seemed to bring out the tremendous significance of those great books; and I treasure them to-day as my choicest possessions."
Marshall Field and other proprietors of the great business houses of Chicago pet.i.tioned the school authorities for improved instruction along moral lines, affirming that the boys needed religious ideas to make them more reliable in business affairs.
It has been said by President White of Cornell that,--"The great thing needed to be taught in this country is _truth, simple ethics, the distinction between right and wrong_. Stress should be laid upon _what is best in biography_, upon _n.o.ble deeds and sacrifices_, especially those which show that the greatest man is not the greatest orator, or the tricky politician. They are a curse; what we need is _n.o.ble men_.
National loss comes as the penalty for frivolous boyhood and girlhood, that gains no moral stamina from wholesome books."
If youths learn to feed on the thoughts of the great men and women of all times, they will never again be satisfied with the common or low; they will never again be satisfied with mediocrity; they will aspire to something higher and n.o.bler.
A day which is pa.s.sed without treasuring up some good thought is not well spent. Every day is a leaf in the book of life. Do not waste a day any more than you would tear out leaves from the book of life.
The Bible, such manuals as "Daily Strength for Daily Needs," such books as Professor C. C. Everett's "Ethics for Young People"; Lucy Elliott Keeler's "If I Were a Girl Again"; "Beauty through Hygiene," by Dr.
Emma F. Walker, such essays as Robert L. Stevenson's "Gentlemen" (in his "Familiar Studies of Men and Books") Munger's "On the Threshold"; John Ruskin's "Sesame and Lilies"--these are the books that make young men and maidens so trustworthy that the Marshall Fields and John Wanamakers want their aid in the conduct of great business concerns.
Blessed are they who go much farther in later years, and who become familiar with those
"Olympian bards who sang Divine ideas below, Which always find us young And always keep us so."
The readers who do not know the Concord philosopher Emerson, and the great names of antiquity, Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus and Plato, have yet great pleasures to come.
Aside from reading fiction, books of travel are of the best for mental diversion; then there are Nature Studies, and Science and Poetry,--all affording wholesome recreation, all of an uplifting character, and some of them opening up study specialties of the highest order, as in the great range of books cla.s.sified as Natural Science.
The reading and study of poetry is much like the interest one takes in the beauties of natural scenery. Much of the best poetry is indeed a poetic interpretation of nature. Whittier and Longfellow and Bryant lead their readers to look on nature with new eyes, as Ruskin opened the eyes of Henry Ward Beecher.
A great deal of the best prose is in style and sentiment of a true poetic character, lacking only the metrical form. To become familiar with Tennyson and Shakespeare, and the brilliant catalogue of British poets is in itself a liberal education. Rolfe's Shakespeare is in handy volumes, and so edited as to be of most service. Palgrave's "Golden Treasury" of the best songs and lyrical poems in the English language was edited with the advice and collaboration of Tennyson. His "Children's Treasury" of lyrical poetry is most attractive. Emerson's Parna.s.sus, and Whittier's "Three Centuries of Song" are excellent collections of the most famous poems of the ages.
Of Books of Travel, here are a dozen t.i.tles, where one might easily name twelve hundred:--
Edmondo de Amicis,--"Holland and Its People," and his "Constantinople."
Frank T. Bullen's "Cruise of the Cachelot Round the World After Sperm Wales."
J. M. Hoppin's "Old England."