No other occupation is so well adapted to the profitable employment of moments of leisure as reading. At any place, at any time, without preparation we may read. Books are always ready to do for us all that our mental state will admit. No man was ever so wretched that he could not claim and receive the companionship and sympathy of the best thought of the best men. No life is so cheerless that it cannot be brightened by books.
Doctor Johnson thought that the most miserable man is he who cannot read on a rainy day. How much those miss who have no love of reading, how time must hang heavily on their hands in illness, in bad weather, in the long evenings. Emerson liked to read and study in a tumultuous privacy of storm.
Reading is often the only pleasure of the sick, bringing to their rooms the heroes of all ages and the scenes of all climes so that they may forget their sufferings in sailing the ocean with Columbus, or leaving the smoke and turmoil of the city they may wander with Thoreau in leafy nooks by the crystal waters of Walden. Sitting in a poor room, ill-fed and ragged a man may entertain Sir Walter Scott or Lord Macaulay and dismiss them without ceremony when he tires of them. The fact that we can stop the talk of a book at will is one of the greatest advantages of reading. Lord Macaulay might have bored one but his books never do.
Reading is the great solace of old age and is one of the few pleasures which increases as the years go by.
Life should be a happy medium between the practical and the ideal; those successful men of business who have no taste for literature often appreciate their deficiencies quite as much as do the impractical idealists who have never accomplished anything of real value. Darwin devoted his mental energies so entirely to the consideration of facts, that he lost all taste for imaginative literature and deeply regretted that his mind in this respect was warped and one sided.
There are, however, many men who have become so dulled by the practicalities of business that they consider it a waste of time to read anything but the newspapers or the reports of the stock market. The pleasure to be gotten from Shakespeare or Tennyson such persons will never know.
Lack of time is made an excuse for superficial accomplishment, but no one is so busy that he cannot find time to read if he will but diligently make the most of his opportunities. “Dost thou value life,” said Franklin, “then do not waste time for that is the stuff life is made of.” “In studies, whatsoever a man commandeth upon himself, let him set hours for it,” says Bacon, but, he adds, “whatsoever is agreeable to his nature, let him take no care for any set hours, for his thoughts will fly to it of themselves.”
A small fixed period devoted to study every day is far better than a longer time given occasionally. The result is not only greater but the mental effect is better. For by devoting a certain time every day to the consideration of noble thoughts your mind which grows by what it feeds on is given food for reflection so that it increases in power even when you are not reading.
There are books not only for all sorts and conditions of men but also for all the varying circumstances of the life of each and for all the different mental phases through which they may pass. A book may have a message for every one but not the same message for each; one it may encourage, another it may rebuke; one it may lead further in the path he is treading, another it may stop and turn into a better way. Habits of thought due to inheritance or occupation modify and in some measure determine the effect of a book and the nature of its message for each reader.
You should adapt books to your mental state, after a hard day’s work the mind easily wearies, while with the strength of the morning you may read the very best that you are capable of. Read the hardest book first and as your mind tires lay it aside and take up something easier. When you find that you are not appreciating what you read stop and give your mind a rest.