WHEN TO READ.
First, read at regular hours. This is for those who follow literary pursuits. No professional person should respect himself in his work who has no special time for reading and study, and who does not conscientiously adhere to it. The pulpit, the law-office, the doctor's office, the teacher, and the editor's desk, each clamors for the man, the woman, who can think. To appreciate God and to sympathize with the human heart; to know law and the intricate special case; to understand disease and relief for the suffering patient; to have something to teach and to know how to teach it even to the dullest pupil; to know human character and to be able to enlighten the public mind and the public conscience; all this requires in the one who serves a deep and growing knowledge and experience which may be realized only in the grasp of truth contained in the up-to-date and best authorized books. The use of books with this class of persons is not optional. They must buy and master them, or a few years at longest will relegate them with their old books and ideas to the dusty garret where they belong.
Then, many must read on economized time. The farmer, the mechanic, the merchant, the shopkeeper, each may find a little time for daily reading. Ten minutes saved in the morning, ten minutes in the afternoon, and ten minutes in the evening, this is half hour a day. In a week this gives one three hours and a half, in a month fourteen hours of solid reading, and in a year one will have read seven days of twenty-four hours each. Think of what may be accomplished in an average lifetime in common reading by the busiest person, who really wants to read. "Schliemann," the noted German scholar and author, "as a boy, standing in line at the post-office waiting his turn for the mail, utilized the time by studying Greek from a little pocket grammar." "Mary Somerfield, the astronomer, while busy with her children in the nursery, wrote her 'Mechanism of the Heavens,' without neglecting her duties as a mother." "Julius Caesar, while a military officer and politician found time to write his Commentaries known throughout the world." William Cobbett says: "I learned grammar when I was a private soldier on a six-pence a day. The edge of my guard-bed was my seat to study in, my knapsack was my bookcase, and a board lying on my lap was my desk. I had no moment at that time that I could call my own; and I had to read and write among the talking, singing, whistling, and bawling of at least half a score of the most thoughtless of men." Among those whom we all know who have risen out of obscurity to eminence through a wise economy of time which they have used in reading and study, are, Patrick Henry, Benjamin West, Eli Whitney, James Watt, Richard Baxter, Roger Sherman, Sir Isaac Newton, and Benjamin Franklin.
VII. SOCIAL RECREATION.
DEFINED.
The normal young person who does not dissipate is bursting with life. The natural child is activity embodied. The healthful old person craves exercise. Life, activity, exercise, each must have some method of spending itself. Some normal method, some right method, some attractive method must be chosen. By normal method we mean that which calls into use the varied faculties and powers of the entire being, body, mind, and heart. By right method we mean that which does not crush out a part of one's being, while another part is being developed. By attractive method in the use of life, activity, exercise, we mean that which appeals to one's peculiar desires, tastes, and circumstances, so long as these are normal and right. Some chosen profession, trade, or work is the rightful heritage of every person. Each man, woman, and child should know when he gets up of a morning, what his work is for that day. Consciously, or unconsciously, he should have some outline of work, some end in view, some goal toward which he is stretching himself. Dr. J. M. Buckley asks: "Have you a purpose and a plan?" And answers, "Life is worth nothing till then." The child is in the hands of his parent, his teacher, his guardian. These must answer to Destiny for his beginning and growth. "Satan finds something for idle hands to do." Hence the necessity of vigilance on the part of those who hold the young. But "all work and no play, makes Jack a dull boy." This rule is good whether "Jack" be a puny girl, a feeble grandfather, a hustling, responsible father, a busy mother, or even a mischievous lad. Every person who rises each morning, dresses himself and goes about his work as if he knew what he were about; who has some useful work to do, and does it, sooner or later, needs rest. True, night comes and one may rest. And sweet is the rest of sleep; a third of one's life is passed in this way. Sancho Panza has it right when he says:
"Now blessing light on him that first invented sleep! It covers a man all over, thoughts and all, like a cloak; it is meat for the hungry, drink for the thirsty, heat for the cold, and cold for the hot." But one craves a recreation, a rest which work nor sleep can give. Man has a social nature, a longing to mingle with his acquaintances and friends. Let one be shut in with work, or sickness, or weather, for whole days at a time, and see how hungry he gets to see some one. A recreation at a social gathering literally makes a new being out of him. He is recreated. It is this form of recreation that we consider here, social recreation.
A NECESSITY.
Social recreation is a necessity in a well-ordered life. As with many other common blessings we forget its benefits. Nor are these benefits so evident until we see the blighting result in the life of the one who, for any reason whatsoever, has become a social recluse. We have known a few persons who have once been in society, but who have allowed themselves to remain away from all sorts of gatherings, for a number of years. In every case, the result has been openly noticeable. They have become boorish in manners, unsympathetic in nature, and suspicious in spirit. Thus they have grown out of harmony with the ideas and ways of those about them, have come to take distorted and erroneous views of affairs and of men. Man is a composite being. Many factors enter into his make-up. He lives not only in the physical and intellectual, in the religious and social, in a local and limited sense, but his life expands until it touches and molds many other characters and communities besides his own. In all of these spheres of his influence and work on needs to be sobered down, corrected, stimulated. In no other way is this better accomplished than through one's very contact with his fellows in the religious gathering, among his workmen, in the political meeting, at the assembly, in the social gathering whenever and wherever persons may see one another and talk over common interests.