Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. (e. R. D.)
Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. (e. S.)
Dickens' Christmas Carol (m. R. D.); Cricket on the
Hearth. (m. R. D.)
Ruskin's Crown of Wild Olive (m. R. D.); Ethics of
the Dust (m. R. D.); Sesame and Lilies. (m. R. D.)
Emerson's Essays (d. R. D. C.); especially those on
Manners, Gifts, Love, Friendship, The Poet, and on Representative
Men.
Demosthenes on the Crown. (m. R. D. C. G.)
Burke's Warren Hastings Oration. (m. R. D. C. G.)
Phillips' Speeches on Lovejoy and Garrison. (m. R.
D. C. G.)
La Fontaine's Fables. (m. R. D.)
Short Biographies of the World's Hundred Greatest Men.
(m. R. D.)
Marshall's Life of Washington. (m. R. D. G.)
Carlyle's Cromwell. (m. R. D. G.)
Tennyson's In Memoriam. (d. R. D. C.)
Byron's Childe Harold. (m. R. D. C.)
Burns' Cotter's Saturday Night. (m. R. D.)
Keats' Endymion. (d. R. D. C.)
Shelley's Prometheus Unbound. (d. R. D. C. G.)
Campbell's Pleasures of Hope. (m. R. D. C.)
Goldsmith's Deserted Village. (m. R. D. C.)
Pope's Essay on Man. (m. R. D. C.)
Thomson's Seasons. (m. R. D. C.)
CHILDREN.
So far we have spoken of reading for grown people. Now we must deal with the reading of young folks,—a subject of the utmost importance. For to give a child good habits of reading, to make him like to read and master strong, pure books,—books filled with wisdom and beauty,—and equally eager to shun bad books, is to do for him and the world a service of the highest possible character; and to neglect the right care of a child in this matter is to do him an injury far greater than to mutilate his face or cut off his arm.
WHAT TO GIVE THE CHILDREN.
Parents, teachers, and others interested in the welfare of young people have not only to solve the problem of selecting books for their own nourishment, but also the more difficult problem of providing the young folks with appropriate literary food. As literature may be made one of the most powerful influences in the development of a child, the greatest care should be taken to make the influence true, pure, and tender, and give it in every respect the highest possible character, which requires as much care to see that bad books do not come into the child's possession and use, as to see that good books do. The ability to read adds to life a wonderful power, but it is a power for evil as well as good. As Lowell says, "It is the key which admits us to the whole world of thought and fancy and imagination,—to the company of saint and sage, of the wisest and wittiest at their wisest and wittiest moments. It enables us to see with the keenest eyes, hear with the finest ears, and listen to the sweetest voices of all time. More than that, it annihilates time and space for us,—reviving without a miracle the Age of Wonder, and endowing us with the shoes of swiftness and the cap of darkness." Yes, but it opens our minds to the thoughts of the vile as well as to those of the virtuous; it unlocks the prisons and haunts of vice as well as the school and the church; it drags us through the sewer as well as gives us admission to the palace; it feeds us on filth as well as the finest food; it pours upon our souls the deepest degradation as well as the spirit of divinity. Parents will do well to keep from their children such books as Richardson's "Pamela" and "Clarissa Harlowe;" Fielding's "Joseph Andrews," "Jonathan Wild," and "Tom Jones;" Smollett's "Humphrey Clinker," "Peregrine Pickle," and "Adventures of an Atom;" Sterne's "Tristram Shandy;" Swift's "Gulliver," and their modern relatives. Many of these coarse pictures of depravity and microscopic analyses of filth I cannot read without feeling insulted by their vulgarity, as I do when some one tells an indecent story in my presence. Whatever the power or wit of a book, if its motive is not high and its expression lofty, it should not come into contact with any life, at least until its character is fixed and hardened in the mould of virtue beyond the period of plasticity that might receive the imprint of the badness in the book. There are plenty of splendid books that are pure and ennobling as well as strong and humorous,—more of them than any one person can ever read,—so that there is no necessity of contact with imperfect literature. If a boy comes into possession of a book that he would not like to read aloud to his mother or sister, he has something that is not good for him to read,—something that is not altogether the very best for anybody to read. Some liberty of choice, however, ought to be allowed the children. It will add much to the vigor and enthusiasm of a boy's reading if, instead of prescribing the precise volume he is to have at each step, he is permitted to make his own selection from a list of three or four chosen by the person who is guiding him. What these three or four should be, is the problem. I cannot agree with Lowell, when he says that young people ought to "confine themselves to the supreme books in whatever literature, or, still better, choose some one great author and make themselves thoroughly familiar with him." It is possible to know something of people in general about me without neglecting my best friends. It is possible to enjoy the society of Shakspeare, Goethe, Æschylus, Dante, Homer, Plato, Spencer, Scott, Eliot, Marcus Aurelius, and Irving, without remaining in ignorance of the power and beauty to be found in Chaucer, Spenser, Milton, Byron, Burns, Goldsmith, Keats, Shelley, Tennyson, Longfellow, Whittier, Holmes, and Lowell, Ingersoll, Omar, Arnold, Brooks, and Robertson, Curtis, Aldrich, Warner, Jewett, Burroughs, Bulwer, Tourgée, Hearn, Kingsley, MacDonald, Hawthorne, Dickens, Thackeray, Carlyle, Ruskin, Hugo, Bronté, Sienkiewicz, and a host of others. Scarcely a day passes that I do not spend a little time with Shakspeare, Goethe, Æschylus, Spencer, and Irving; but I should be sorry to have any one of those I have named beyond call at any time. There are parts of Holmes, Lowell, Brooks, Emerson, Omar, Arnold, Tourgée, and Hearn that are as dear to me as any passages of equal size in Goethe or Irving. So it does not seem best to me to confine the attention to the supreme books; a just proportion is the true rule. Let the supreme books have the supreme attention, absorb them, print them on the brain, carry them about in the heart, but give a due share of time to other books. I like the suggestion of Marietta Holley: "I would feed children with little sweet crumbs of the best of books, and teach them that a whole rich feast awaited them in the full pages," only taking care in each instance that the crumb is well rounded, the picture not torn or distorted. There are paragraphs and pages in many works of the second rank that are equal to almost anything in the supreme books, and superior to much the latter contain. These passages should be sought and cherished; and the work of condensing the thought and beauty of literature—making a sort of literary prayer-book—is an undertaking that ought not to be much longer delayed. Until it is done, however, there is no way but to read widely, adapting the speed and care to the value of the volume. Some things may be best read by deputy, as Mark Twain climbed the Alps by agent; newspapers, for example, and many of the novels that flame up like a haystack on fire, and fade like a meteor in its fall, striking the earth never to rise again. The time that many a young man spends upon newspapers would be sufficient to make him familiar with a dozen undying books every year. Newspapers are not to be despised, but they should not be allowed to crowd out more important things. I keep track of the progress of events by reading the "Outlook" in the "Christian Union" every week, and glancing at the head-lines of the "Herald" or "Journal," reading a little of anything specially important, or getting an abstract from a friend who always reads the paper. A good way to economize time is for a number of friends to take the same paper, the first page being allotted to one, the second to another, and so on, each vocally informing the others of the substance of his page. If time cannot be found for both the newspaper and the classic, the former, not the latter, should receive the neglect.
This matter of the use of time is one concerning which parents should strive to give their children good habits from the first. If you teach a child to economize time, and fill him with a love of good books, you ensure him an education far beyond anything he can get in the university,—an education that will cease only with his life. The creation of a habit of industrious study of books that will improve the character, develop the powers, and store the mind with force and beauty,—that is the great object.
A good example is the best teacher. It is well for parents to keep close to the child until he grows old enough to learn how to determine for himself what he should read (which usually is not before fifteen or twenty, and in many cases never); for children, and grown folks too for that matter, crave intellectual as much as they do physical companionship.