Chapter 83
Clifton Johnson, "Among English Hedgerows."
W. D. Howell's "Venetian Life"; "Italian Journeys."
Irving's "Sketch Book," and the "Alhambra."
Henry James, "Portraits of Places."
Arthur Smith's "Chinese Characteristics," and especially his "Village Life in China."
It would be impossible to list books more interesting and more useful than most fiction, which may be called Nature Studies.
I will name a few books that will certainly incite the reader to search for more:--
Ernest Ingersoll's "Book of the Ocean."
Professor E. S. Holder's "The Sciences," a reading book for children.
Jean Mace's "History of a Mouthful of Bread."
E. A. Martin's "Story of a Piece of Coal."
Professor Charles A. Young's "The Sun," revised edition 1895.
Serviss' "Astronomy with an Opera-Gla.s.s," "Pleasures of the Telescope,"
"The Skies and the Earth."
Th.o.r.eau's "Walden; or Life in the Woods."
Mrs. F. T. Parsons' (Smith) Dana. "According to Seasons"; talks about the flowers in the order of their appearance in the woods and fields.
Describes wild flowers in order of blooming, with information about their haunts and habits. Also, by the same author, "How to Know the Wild Flowers". Describes briefly more than 400 varieties common east of Chicago, grouping them by color.
Seton-Thompson's "Wild Animals I have Known"; of which 100,000 copies have been sold.
F. A. Lucas' "Animals of the Past"
Bradford Towey's "Birds in the Bush," and "Everyday Birds."
President D. S. Jordan's "True Tales of Birds and Beasts."
D. L. Sharp's "A Watcher in the Woods."
W. H. Gibson's "Sharp Eyes."
M. W. Morley's "The Bee-people."
Never before was a practical subst.i.tute for a college education at home made so cheap, so easy, and so attractive. Knowledge of all kinds is placed before us in a most attractive and interesting manner. The best of the literature of the world is found to-day in thousands of American homes where fifty years ago it could only have been obtained by the rich.
What a shame it is that under such conditions as these an American should grow up ignorant, should be uneducated in the midst of such marvelous opportunities for self-improvement! Indeed, most of the best literature in every line to-day appears in the current periodicals, in the form of short articles. Many of our greatest writers spend a vast amount of time in the drudgery of travel and investigation in gathering material for these articles, and the magazine publishers pay thousands of dollars for what a reader can get for ten or fifteen cents. Thus the reader secures for a trifle in periodicals or books the results of months and often years of hard work and investigation of our greatest writers.
A New York millionaire,--a prince among merchants,--took me over his palatial residence on Fifth Avenue, every room of which was a triumph of the architect's, of the decorator's, and of the upholsterer's art.
I was told that the decorations of a single sleeping-room had cost ten thousand dollars. On the walls were paintings secured at fabulous prices, and about the rooms were pieces of ma.s.sive and costly furniture, and draperies representing a small fortune, and carpets on which it seemed almost sacrilege to tread covered the floors. But there was scarcely a book in the house. He had expended a fortune for physical pleasures, comforts, luxury, and display. It was pitiful to think of the physical surfeit and mental starvation of the children of such a home as
Many a rich man has confessed to confidential friends and his own heart that he would give much of his wealth,--all, if necessary,--to see his son a manly man, free from the habits which abundance has formed and fostered till they have culminated in sin and degradation and perhaps crime; and has realized that, in all his ample provision, he has failed to provide that which might have saved his son and himself from loss and torture,--good books.
There is a wealth within the reach of the poorest mechanic and day-laborer in this country that kings in olden times could not possess, and that is the wealth of a well-read, cultured mind. In this newspaper age, this age of cheap books and periodicals, there is no excuse for ignorance, for a coa.r.s.e, untrained mind. To-day no one is so handicapped, if he have health and the use of his faculties, that he can not possess himself of wealth that will enrich his whole life, and enable him to converse and mingle with the most cultured people. No one is so poor but that it is possible for him to lay hold of that which will broaden his mind, which will inform and improve him, and lift him out of the brute stage of existence into their G.o.d-like realm of knowledge.
"No entertainment is so cheap as reading," says Mary Wortley Montague; "nor any pleasure so lasting." Good books elevate the character, purify the taste, _take the attractiveness out of low pleasures_, and lift us upon a higher plane of thinking and living.
"A great part of what the British spend on books," says Sir John Lubbock, "they save in prisons and police."
It seems like a miracle that the poorest boy can converse freely with the greatest philosophers and scientists, statesmen, warriors, authors of all time with little expense, that the inmates of the humblest cabin may follow the stories of the nations, the epochs of history, the story of liberty, the romance of the world, and the course of human progress.
Have you just been to a well educated sharp-sighted employer to find work? You did not need to be at any trouble to tell him the names of the books you have read, because they have left their indelible mark upon your face and your speech. Your pinched, starved vocabulary, your lack of polish, your slang expressions, tell him of the trash you have given your precious time to. He knows that you have not rightly systemized your hours. He knows that thousands of young men and women whose lives are crowded to overflowing with routine work and duties, manage to find time to keep posted on what is going on in the world, and for systematic, useful reading.
Carlyle said that a collection of books is a university. What a pity that the thousands of ambitious, energetic men and women who missed their opportunities for an education at the school age, and feel crippled by their loss, fail to catch the significance of this, fail to realize the tremendous c.u.mulative possibilities of that great life-improver that admirable subst.i.tute for a college or university education--reading.
"Of the things which man can do or make here below," it was said by the sage of Chelsea, "by far the most momentous, wonderful, and worthy, are the things we call Books! Those poor bits of rag-paper with black ink on them; from the Daily Newspaper to the sacred Hebrew Book, what have they not done, what are they not doing?"
President Schurmann of Cornell, points with pride to a few books in his library which he says he bought when a poor boy by going many a day without his dinner.
The great German Professor Oken was not ashamed to ask Professor Aga.s.siz to dine with him on potatoes and salt, that he might save money for books.
King George III, used to say that lawyers do not know so much more law than other people; but they know better where to find it.
A practical working knowledge of how to find what is in the book world, relating to any given point, is worth a vast deal from a financial point of view. And by such knowledge, one forms first an acquaintance with books, then friends.h.i.+p.
"When I consider," says James Freeman Clarke, "what some books have done for the world, and what they are doing, how they keep up our hope, awaken new courage and faith, soothe pain, give an ideal of life to those whose homes are hard and cold, bind together distant ages and foreign lands, create new worlds of beauty, bring down truths from heaven,--I give eternal blessings for this gift."
For the benefit of the younger readers we give below a list of forty juveniles.
Aesop's "Fables."
Louise M. Alcott's "Little Women," "Little Men," which stood at the top of a list of books chosen in eleven thousand elementary cla.s.s-rooms in New York.
T. B. Aldrich's "Story of a Bad Boy."
Anderson's "Fairy Tales."
Amelia E. Barr's "The Bow of Orange Ribbon," a book for girls.
"Black Beauty."
E. S. Brooks, "True Story of General Grant."
Bulfinch's "Children's Lives of Great Men," "Age of Chivalry," and "Age of Fable."