Talks to Young Men, IV: What Books to Read

TALKS TO YOUNG MEN. IV—WHAT BOOKS TO READ. This books can do—nor this alone; they give New views to life, and teach us how to live; They soothe the grieved, the stubborn they chastise, Fools they admonish, and confirm the wise; Their aid they yield to all; they never shun The man of sorrow, nor the wretch undone; Unlike the hard, the selfish, and the proud, They fly not sullen from the suppliant crowd; Nor tell to various people various things, But show to subjects what they show to kings.

• —Georqe Crabbe. We desire to say a few more words to the young men of our spread- ing communities regarding books. There are many young men who go wrong, or fail to make of themselves that of which they are capable, for want of proper influence. They seek pleasure in the society of other young men, and too often form the habit of assembling on the street, around some public building, or the village store or saloon. This habit grows upon them until they find themselves forming a character along that line. When the character is once formed, right or wrong, it is a very difficult task to effect a reconstruction. It is natural for one to seek pleasure, in fact, self-love, or that which gives pleasure to the in- dividual, is the spring of all his actions. So that the source of pleasure is al vays a matter of choice, on the part of its seeker. The friends and congenial companions with whom you may intermingle are not limited to the boys and men of your own neighborhood; by merely opening the book-case door, you may enter into the real living and enjoyable com- pany of the men whose minds and souls have made them live forever among men. Their works have made them immortal. Think of it! By merely opening an average library you may enter into the closest con- tact with the minds and hearts of such worthies as Charles Dickens, Sir Walter Scott, Longfellow, Tennyson, Shakespeare, Bryant, Holmes, Whittier, Irving, Smiles, Hume, Gibbon, Bunyan, Peter, Paul, John the Beloved, and the prophets of olden time. There are one or two advantages which these friends possess over those of the street or shop; the one you wish to enjoy comes to you at

TALKS TO YOUNG MEN. 291 your will, and alone, if you choose. In the other case, you have to take the crowd as a whole, good, bad and indifferent. You certainly have your social preferences, but if you assert them too emphatically, you offend some blustering fellow, and trouble brews. With these other gentlemen, modest, willing and allert to serve, you need have no fear of offending. You can even shut them up without offense. This you cannot often do with the crowd. It is this fact that we wish to make clear: Man strives for pleasure among his kind. His destiny depends upon the nature of his surround- ings, and the use he puts them to. It behooves him, then, to seek good company, and have always about him an uplifting influence. We do not say that among the silent series on the shelf there may not be some who are of the bad and degrading sort. Alas! it is too true. The police court and sexton can best attest this sad truth from the perverted youths and early graves which bad literature produces in this age of books. As an example of the power of a book, the writer recalls an occur- rence of a shocking character, which was chronicled through the press, not many years since. A young man was grieving over the death of a devoted wife. One of Col. Ingersoll's lectures, which ridiculed and denied the belief in a hereafter, fell into the young man's hands. He read it, and to his grief was added despair. Hope and faith were up- rooted from his heart, and the love of life, being thus destroyed, his lifeless body was found upon the newly formed mound of his wife's grave, the victim of bad literature, an offering upon the altar of error. It is imperative that the young learn to discriminate among books. Here is a good test of a book. Does it have a tendency to stimu- late and awaken good and noble feelings? Does it open up to you realms of pure thought? Does it dwarf, and drive from the soul selfish- ness, and constantly appeal to the higher and nobler thought that is within you? In short, does it promote within you a "love of love, and a hate of hate?" Then it is a good book. Anything very far short of this is not worth reading. To those not initiated, books are mute and silent heaps, but one who has taken the pains to form the acquaintance of books, he finds them liv- ing, breathing things. Take them down from the shelf, open them and listen. The vital spark of the author's intellect glows through every page. The personal influence of the' man is felt. He becomes your friend, and always afterwards pleads with you, and draws you up to him. This thought gave birth to the expression, among the Italians, Our making of books is all in vain, if books in turn do nothing to make man.

292 IMPROVEMENT ERA. When the writer was a boy of sixteen years, he received as a gift from the Sunday school, of a fifty cent copy of Smiles' "Self Help." He read it, and learned to regard Samuel Smiles among the best friends he knew. He has felt ever since that the book was worth its weight in gold to him, and said many times that if he should ever amount to anything in life, "Self Help" would come in for merit, second only to good parentage and gospel influence. The young book-reader must learn to discriminate. "Do with a book as a bee does with the flower," says Smiles. If this discrimination is made with books, as it must be with other associates, one derives the real benefits books are designed to afford. One should always be under the influence of some good book. He is happy indeed whose mind is constantly refreshed by the liv- ing presence of new and pure thoughts. What has been said regarding the influence, proper use, and benefits of books, may apply more par- ticularly to those who have many books. We wish to speak with the kindest and most encouraging interest to those who have few books. To the young man whose library consists of a half-dozen volumes, the relics of a father, or grandfather: you have more books than some of the really great men of the past had. Lincoln was a man of few books. Frederick Warde once said that Shakespeare had but three books, Plutarch's Lives, Hollinghead's Chances, and the Bible. Of course, to him the book of nature was constantly before his penetrating eye. To him there were, "tongues in trees, sermons in stones, books in running brooks, and good in everything," but his bound volumes were very few, but he was master of them. "The man of one book is to be feared more than the one of many." It is because he knows that one book well, while the other has com- pletely mastered none, but has a smattering knowledge of them all. So that, Shakespeare and Lincoln stand as a strong resentment to youth who complain at not having enough books to read. Don't overdo novel reading. Start out with Scott, Dickens, Lytton, or some other standard author, and you'll never descend to trashy novels. Novel reading is a vice with some. They become all-absorbing sponges, and drink in everything; then to get rid of the absorbtion, they press it out of the mind by trying to forget it, because it is not worth remem- bering. This process weakens the intellect and trains the mind to the sad habit of unretentiveness. Things that are not worth remembering all one's life are not worth reading for one hour. They only play upon the emotions, and excite for a time feelings to no good end.

TALKS TO YOUNG MEN. 293 A few books which some young men would be greatly benefited by reading: The life of Franklin is one of the best that young Americans can read. Samuel Smiles' books, "Character," "Thrift," "Industry," and "Self Help" should be read by every young man in the land They have been translated into about fifteen different languages. (The boys and girls of Japan and China have been reading them for nearly twenty years). Some good books on natural history, something that will teach them to observe the lessons of nature; something that will awaken in them a tender admiration of the smallest of God's creatures; they should also read Audubon, Thoreau, and Daniel Boone who are good along this line, also Seton's delightful studies in'wild life. iEsop's Fables is a book that lives, too. Then, as the mind matures, our own poets, from Irving down to Longfellow, should be taken up. In English literature Bacon, Moore.Shakespeare, then down to Milton and Tennyson. Then there is French, Italian, and the German literature. Every well-read person must have read Dante, and of Goethe it was said by Carlyle, it was worth the learning of the German tongue merely to read him in the original. But among the orbs that glitter, shedding their soft and gentle rays with greater or less glory, there is one that shines forth as the "eye of heaven," the Holy Scriptures. This is The lamp, from off the everlasting throne, Mercy took down, and in the night of time Stood casting on the dark her gracious brow, And evermore beseeching men with tears And earnest sighs, to hear, believe, and live. —Pollock. No man can be said to have a finished education, or even be well read, without being acquainted with the Bible. The graceful lines of Shakespeare betray, at nearly every point, the gentle light of the Holy Scriptures. The strongest sayings of Lincoln were nearly always based upon Bible principle. If you doubt the uni- versal use of the Scriptures, by the literary men of all times, read from Genesis to Revelations, and your doubts will be dispelled forever. The sublimest epics from Dante and Milton are woven almost entirely from that wonderful fabric of the inspired writings. The Bible stands out as the miracle of all time. When good old John Bright read the 51st Psalm, so full of penitence and patient hope, pleading for pardon, and seeking solace in the comforting folds of divine love, he was led to say, it was a miracle great enough to convince him of the inspiration of the Bible. Reader, just turn to that psalm and, after carefully reading it, allow your thoughts to be transferred to the age in which it was written

294 IMPROVEMENT ERA. —the days when Rome was founded. The history of Romulus and Remus is a fable now observed in the misty, uncertain past, while the Psalm is as fresh and potent to touch the heart today, as when it poured from the poetic soul of the sweet Psalmist of Israel. President Theodore Roosevelt, in an effort to estimate what our loss to civic and social life would be, if the Bible, and the memory of its teachings, were entirely blotted out, says that we would "lose almost all the standards by which we now judge both public and private morals; all the standards toward which we, with more or less resolution, strive to raise ourselves." He then continues: Almost every man who has, by his life work, added to the sum of human achievement of which the race is proud, of which our people are proud, almost every such man has based his life-work largely upon the teachings of the Bible. Sometimes it has been done unconsciously, more often consciously, and among the very greatest men a disproportionately large number have been diligent and close students of the Bible at first hand. Lincoln—sad, patient, kindly Lincoln, who after bearing upon his weary shoulders for four years a greater burden than that borne by any other man of the nineteenth century, laid down his life for the people whom, living, he had served so well—built up his entire reading upon his early study of the Bible. He had mastered it absolutely; mastered it as, later, he mastered only one or two other books, notably, Shakespeare; mastered it so that he became almost "a man of one book, "who knew that book, and who instinctively put into practice what he had been taught therein; and he left his life as part of the crowning work of the century that has just closed. You may look through the Bible, from cover to cover, and nowhere will you find a line that can be constructed into an apology for the man of brains who sins against the light. On the contrary, in the Bible, taking that as a guide, you will find that be- cause much has been given to you, much will be expected of you, and a heavier condemnation is to be visited upon the able man who goes wrong than upon his weaker brother who can not do the harm that the other does, because it is not in him to do it. Only one more suggestion, and that is that you read the Life of Christ, and never cease reading it. If you haven't a Farrar, Giekie, or Watson, go to the source they went to, and read for your- self the simple fisherman's story which has charmed and won the hearts of men of both high and low degree for nearly twenty centuries. Con- cluding, let us quote the pious admonitions of the Church of England homilies, written about three centuries ago: There is nothing that so much strengtheneth our faith and trust in God, that so much keepeth up innocency and pureness of heart, and also of outward godly life and conversation, as constant reading and recording of God's word. For that thing which is deeply printed and graven in the heart, at length turn- eth almost into nature.