How to Succeed Part 23

Ignorance is the curse of G.o.d, Knowledge the wing wherewith we fly to heaven.

--SHAKESPEARE.

Prefer knowledge to wealth; for the one is transitory, the other perpetual.

--SOCRATES.

If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take it away from him. An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.

--FRANKLIN.

My early and invincible love of reading, I would not exchange for the treasures of India.

--GIBBON.

If the crowns of all the kingdoms of the empire were laid down at my feet in exchange for my books and my love of reading, I would spurn them all.

--FeNELON.

Who of us can tell What he had been, had Cadmus never taught The art that fixes into form the thought,-- Had Plato never spoken from his cell, Or his high harp blind Homer never strung?

--BULWER.

When friends grow cold and the converse of intimates languishes into vapid civility and common-place, these only continue the unaltered countenance of happier days, and cheer us with that true friendship which never deceived hope, nor deserted sorrow.

--WASHINGTON IRVING.

"Do you want to know," asks Robert Collyer, "how I manage to talk to you in this simple Saxon? I read Bunyan, Crusoe, and Goldsmith when I was a boy, morning, noon, and night. All the rest was task work; these were my delight, with the stories in the Bible, and with Shakespeare, when at last the mighty master came within our doors. The rest were as senna to me. These were like a well of pure water, and this is the first step I seem to have taken of my own free will toward the pulpit. * * * I took to these as I took to milk, and, without the least idea what I was doing, got the taste for simple words into the very fibre of my nature.

There was day-school for me until I was eight years old, and then I had to turn in and work thirteen hours a day. * * * * From the days when we used to spell out Crusoe and old Bunyan there had grown up in me a devouring hunger to read books. It made small matter what they were, so they were books. Half a volume of an old encyclopaedia came along--the first I had ever seen. How many times I went through that I cannot even guess. I remember that I read some old reports of the Missionary Society with the greatest delight.

"There were chapters in them about China and Labrador. Yet I think it is in reading, as it is in eating, when the first hunger is over you begin to be a little critical, and will by no means take to garbage if you are of a wholesome nature. And I remember this because it touches this beautiful valley of the Hudson. I could not go home for the Christmas of 1839, and was feeling very sad about it all, for I was only a boy; and sitting by the fire, an old farmer came in and said: 'I notice thou's fond of reading, so I brought thee summat to read.' It was Irving's 'Sketch Book.' I had never heard of the work. I went at it, and was 'as them that dream.' No such delight had touched me since the old days of Crusoe. I saw the Hudson and the Catskills, took poor Rip at once into my heart, as everybody has, pitied Ichabod while I laughed at him, thought the old Dutch feast a most admirable thing, and long before I was through, all regret at my lost Christmas had gone down with the wind, and I had found out there are books and books. That vast hunger to read never left me. If there was no candle, I poked my head down to the fire; read while I was eating, blowing the bellows, or walking from one place to another. I could read and walk four miles an hour. The world centred in books. There was no thought in my mind of any good to come out of it; the good lay in the reading. I had no more idea of being a minister than you elder men who were boys then, in this town, had that I should be here to-night to tell this story. Now, give a boy a pa.s.sion like this for anything, books or business, painting or farming, mechanism or music, and you give him thereby a lever to lift his world, and a patent of n.o.bility, if the thing he does is n.o.ble. There were two or three of my mind about books. We became companions, and gave the roughs a wide berth. The books did their work, too, about that drink, and fought the devil with a finer fire."

"In education," says Herbert Spencer, "the process of self-development should be encouraged to the fullest extent. Children should be led to make their own investigations, and to draw their own inferences. They should be _told_ as little as possible, and induced to _discover_ as much as possible. Humanity has progressed solely by self-instruction; and that to achieve the best results each mind must progress somewhat after the same fashion, is continually proved by the marked success of self-made men."

"My books," said Thomas Hood, "kept me from the ring, the dog-pit, the tavern, and the saloon. The a.s.sociate of Pope and Addison, the mind accustomed to the n.o.ble though silent discourse of Shakespeare and Milton, will hardly seek or put up with low or evil company or slaves."

"When I get a little money," said Erasmus, "I buy books, and if any is left, I buy food and clothes."

"Hundreds of books read once," says Robertson, "have pa.s.sed as completely from us as if we had never read them; whereas the discipline of mind got by writing down, not copying, an abstract of a book which is worth the trouble fixes it on the mind for years, and, besides, enables one to read other books with more attention and more profit."

"This habit of reading, I make bold to tell you," says Trollope, "is your pa.s.s to the greatest, the purest, and the most perfect pleasures that G.o.d has prepared for His creatures. Other pleasures may be more ecstatic; but the habit of reading is the only enjoyment I know, in which there is no alloy."

The Bible was begun in the desert in Arabia ages before Homer sang and flourished in Asia Minor. Millions of books have since gone into oblivion. Empires have risen and fallen. Revolutions have swept over and changed the earth. It has always been subject to criticism and obloquy.

Mighty men have sought its overthrow. Works of Greek poets who catered to men's depraved tastes have, in spite of everything, perished. The Bible is a book of religion; and can be tried by no other standard.

"Read Plutarch," said Emerson, "and the world is a proud place peopled with men of positive quality, with heroes and demi-G.o.ds standing around us who will not let us sleep."

"There is no business, no avocation whatever," says Wyttenbach, "which will not permit a man, who has an inclination, to give a little time, every day, to the studies of his youth."

"All the sport in the park," said Lady Jane Grey, "is but a shadow of that pleasure I find in Plato."

"In the lap of Eternity," said Heinsius, "among so many divine souls, I take my seat with so lofty a spirit and such sweet content, that I pity all the great ones and rich men, that have not this happiness."

"Death itself divides not the wise," says Bulwer. "Thou meetest Plato when thine eyes moisten over the Phaedo. May Homer live with all men forever!"

"When a man reads," says President Porter, "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 repet.i.tion 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 catchwords or other symbols, will aid him, let him not shrink from the drudgery of the pen and the commonplace book."

"Reading is to the mind," says Addison, "what exercise is to the body.

As by the one health is preserved, strengthened and invigorated, by the other, virtue (which is the health of the mind) is kept alive, cherished and confirmed."

"There is a world of science necessary in choosing books," said Bulwer.

"I have known some people in great sorrow fly to a novel, or the last light book in fashion. One might as well take a rose draught for the plague! Light reading does not do when the heart is really heavy. I am told that Goethe, when he lost his son, took to study a science that was new to him. Ah! Goethe was a physician who knew what he was about."

"When I served when a young man in India," said a distinguished English soldier and diplomatist; "when it was the turning point in my life; when it was a mere chance whether I should become a mere card-playing, hooka-smoking lounger, I was fortunately quartered for two years in the neighborhood of an excellent library, which was made accessible to me."

"Books," says E. P. Whipple, "are lighthouses erected in the great sea of time."

"As a rule," said Benjamin Disraeli, "the most successful man in life is the man who has the best information."

"You get into society, in the widest sense," says Geikie, "in a great library, with the huge advantage of needing no introductions, and not dreading repulses. From that great crowd you can choose what companions you please, for in the silent levees of the immortals there is no pride, but the highest is at the service of the lowest, with a grand humility.

You may speak freely with any, without a thought of your inferiority; for books are perfectly well-bred, and hurt no one's feelings by any discriminations." Sir William Waller observed, "In my study, I am sure to converse with none but wise men, but abroad it is impossible for me to avoid the society of fools." "It is the glorious prerogative of the empire of knowledge," says Webster, "that what it gains it never loses.

On the contrary, it increases by the multiple of its own power; all its ends become means, all its attainments help to new conquests."

"At this hour, five hundred years since their creation," says De Quincey, "the tales of Chaucer, never equaled on this earth for their tenderness and for life of picturesqueness, are read familiarly by many in the charming language of their natal day, and by others in the modernization of Dryden, of Pope, and Wordsworth. At this hour, one thousand eight hundred years since their creation, the pagan tales of Ovid, never equaled on this earth for the gayety of their movement and the capricious graces of their narrative, are read by all Christendom."

"There is no Past so long as Books shall live," says Lytton.

"No wonder Cicero said that he would part with all he was worth so he might live and die among his books," says Geikie. "No wonder Petrarch was among them to the last, and was found dead in their company. It seems natural that Bede should have died dictating, and that Leibnitz should have died with a book in his hand, and Lord Clarendon at his desk. Buckle's last words, 'My poor book!' tell a pa.s.sion that forgot death; and it seemed only a fitting farewell when the tear stole down the manly cheeks of Scott as they wheeled him into his library, when he had come back to Abbotsford to die. Southey, white-haired, a living shadow, sitting stroking and kissing the books he could no longer open or read, is altogether pathetic."

"No entertainment is so cheap as reading," says Mary Wortley Montagu; "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. It is not easy to be mean directly after reading a n.o.ble and inspiring book. The conversation of a man who reads for improvement or pleasure will be flavored by his reading; but it will not be about his reading.

Perhaps no other thing has such power to lift the poor out of his poverty, the wretched out of his misery, to make the burden-bearer forget his burden, the sick his sufferings, the sorrower his grief, the downtrodden his degradation, as books. They are friends to the lonely, companions to the deserted, joy to the joyless, hope to the hopeless, good cheer to the disheartened, a helper to the helpless. They bring light into darkness, and sunshine into shadow.

"Twenty-five years ago, when I was a boy," said Rev. J. A. James, "a school-fellow gave me an infamous book, which he lent me for only fifteen minutes. At the end of that time it was returned to him, but that book has haunted me like a spectre ever since. I have asked G.o.d on my knees to obliterate that book from my mind, but I believe that I shall carry down with me to the grave the spiritual damage I received during those fifteen minutes."

Did Homer and Plato and Socrates and Virgil ever dream that their words would echo through the ages, and aid in shaping men's lives in the nineteenth century? They were mere infants when on earth in comparison with the mighty influence and power they now yield. Every life on the American continent has in some degree been influenced by them. Christ, when on earth, never exerted one millionth part of the influence He wields to-day. While He reigns supreme in few human hearts, He touches all more or less, the atheist as well as the saint. On the other hand who shall say how many crimes were committed the past year by wicked men buried long ago? Their books, their pictures, their terrible examples, live in all they reach, and incite to evil deeds. How important, then, is the selection of books which are to become a part of your being.

Knowledge cannot be stolen from us. It cannot be bought or sold. We may be poor, and the sheriff may come and sell our furniture, or drive away our cow, or take our pet lamb, and leave us homeless and penniless; but he cannot lay the law's hand upon the jewelry of our minds.

"Good books and the wild woods are two things with which man can never become too familiar," says George W. Cable. "The friendship of trees is a sort of self-love and is very wholesome. All inanimate nature is but a mirror, and it is greater far to have the sense of beauty than it is to be only its insensible depository.

"The books that inspire imagination, whether in truth or fiction; that elevate the thoughts, are the right kind to read. Our emotions are simply the vibrations of our soul.

"The moment fiction becomes mendacious it is bad, for it induces us to believe a lie. Fiction purely as fiction must be innocent and beautiful, and its beauty must be more than skin deep. Every field of art is a playground and we are extra pleased when the artist makes that field a gymnasium also."

Cotton Mather's "Essay to do Good" read by the boy Franklin influenced the latter's whole life. He advised everybody to read with a pen in hand and to make notes of all they read.

James T. Fields visited Jesse Pomeroy, the boy murderer, in jail.

Pomeroy told him he had been a great reader of "blood and thunder"

stories; that he had read sixty dime novels about scalping and other b.l.o.o.d.y performances; and he thought there was no doubt that these books had put the horrible thoughts into his mind which led to his murderous acts.

Many a boy has gone to sea and become a rover for life under the influence of Marryat's novels. Abbott's "Life of Napoleon," read at the age of seven years, sent one boy whom I knew to the army before he was fourteen. Many a man has committed crime from the leavening, multiplying influence of a bad book read when a boy. The chaplain of Newgate prison in London, in one of his annual reports to the Lord Mayor, referring to many fine-looking lads of respectable parentage in the city prison, said that he discovered that "all these boys, without exception, had been in the habit of reading those cheap periodicals" which were published for the alleged amus.e.m.e.nt of youth of both s.e.xes. There is not a police court or a prison in this country where similar cases could not be found. One can hardly measure the moral ruin that has been caused in this generation by the influence of bad books.

In the parlor window of the old mossy vicarage where Coleridge spent his dreamy childhood lay a well-thumbed copy of that volume of Oriental fancy, the "Arabian Nights," and he has told us with what mingled desire and apprehension he was wont to look at the precious book, until the morning sunshine had touched and illuminated it, when, seizing it hastily, he would carry it off in triumph to some leafy nook in the vicarage garden, and plunge delightedly into its maze of marvels and enchantments.