Read all of the required books for outlook and inspiration but study one of the books at least for discipline. Read it as you do the rest. Read it more carefully than you read the rest. Read it over and over. Read it to recall what you read. Read it with critical helps of every kind. Having read it think about it. Think and think. Think beyond it. By some thought in it be led out to some other thought not in it, but thought of because of the book. Such chosen book out of each year’s list will become dearer to you than all the rest and will make the mere reading of all the rest more profitable.
Which book shall I select out of the “required” list for 1882, to read thus thoughtfully and critically? All need not choose the same. Follow your “bent.” Take a part of one of the larger books. Begin with a limited amount. Try pages 124-199 in Prof. Wilkinson’s preparatory “Greek Course in English,” or choose one chapter in Bishop Warren’s “Recreations in Astronomy,” or one period in “Geology,” or “Evangeline.” Try the plan.
Have you seen Prang’s C. L. S. C. Mottoes? Three of them at one dollar each. In exquisite taste. He issues nothing finer. Friends of C. L. S. C. people could do no more graceful thing than to hang one or more of these mottoes, in Prang’s best style, on the Christmas tree. A good idea!
A busy housewife says: “I must write you one thing I have found out, for perhaps you have never heard it, certainly no one ever told it me: If a woman wants to find time for almost everything, she must keep house and do her own work.”
The real object of education is to give children resources that will endure as long as life endures; habits that will ameliorate in disaster; occupation that will render sickness tolerable, solitude pleasant, age venerable, life more dignified and more useful, and death less terrible.—Sidney Smith.