THE SCHOOL'S GREATEST BOON
The greatest boon that the system of public schools, or the college, or the university, can confer upon any boy or girl is to teach him or her to use a great collection of literature, to teach them how to read; and to plant within their hearts an irresistible impulse and an indestructible delight in so doing. What profits it a man to learn how to read if he does not read? For what purpose is the mind trained and developed by the process of systematic study in the schools if it is not inspired to go farther into the realms of knowledge? Is it a rational procedure for one, upon the completion of his course of training, to discontinue all further investigation and to lay aside what little love for learning and literature and philosophy and science that may have been aroused in his bosom by school or college inspirations? And how is this advancing and widening of one's horizon by means of the accumulated stores of knowledge gathered by the previous generations of the world's strong thinkers and beautiful writers to be secured, other than by a collection of good books, by a library?
C. C. THACH.