Open That Door!

by R. Sturgis Ingersoll

Nor blank; it means intensely, and means good:

To find its meaning is my meat and drink.

FRA LIPPO LIPPI

There is the Rub! Of how many of us can it be said that the World "means intensely and means good"? Do we unsatisfactorily stutter, and stumble, and barely exist through the three score years and ten that is our portion, or do we find in life a splendid activity that gladdens our heart and fills us full of the thorough-going ecstasy of living?

I have a friend who is a great athlete,—an oarsman, mountain climber, big game hunter. He exults in a life of action, of doing big things, and yet withal, he is a tremendous reader and one of exquisite taste and wide knowledge in books and authors. I asked him of the value of reading.

"Every time I read a great book," he answered, "I feel as if I had punched a hole through the wall," and so saying he crashed his large fist against a buttress of reinforced concrete. "I feel that my world has been made larger; where before I had only seen a blank space, now I see a new world, the world in which the author lived. I am that much more alive to my own."

He applied his reading to his daily life, and the world became for him a richer, more exciting place in which to live. No one wants to plod through the world in a blind, sleepy fashion. We all want to live as keenly, as vitally as possible. The roots of the present are buried deep in the past—to appreciate and have understanding of the present you must appreciate and have understanding of the past—to realize how small and one-sided is your own point of view, you must appreciate the thousand and one viewpoints that have appeared through the ages to the eyes of other men and women.

In beginning to form the habit of reading, the first thing to be realized is that books are intimately connected with the world in which we live. Their true value does not come from the pleasure you experience during the actual hours in which you are turning the pages, but (and this point cannot too vividly be borne in mind) in the reaction of you upon the world and the world upon you after having read them. If a book does not influence your point of view towards God, your fellow men, and your daily tasks and ambitions, you may feel assured either that the book is one of little worth, or that you have not absorbed its true meaning. When you hear someone say that reading is an excellent way to pass the time, you may feel sure that he knows little about books. The poem, the novel, the history, the philosophy are not to pass the time, they are to make more vital the hours of life. A book that is a book becomes part and parcel of your being, and you must of necessity make it part of your life.

Authors are not for the library, they are for the street, the railroad train, the office, the open fields. Read them in the library, or even in bed, but live them in the city thoroughfares, or country roads or workaday places in which you make your life. No man can read the Journals of that mystic, nature lover, Henry David Thoreau, without having his next trip to the country one of greater pleasure. The colors and the sounds of the fields, the woodlands and the brooks will bring a new joy to his spirit. No man can read the novels of some great gobbler of life, such as eighteenth century Tobias Smollett, without finding the city life of our twentieth century more human, more satisfying, more exciting. No man can seriously read a religious poet such as Whitman or Wordsworth without becoming more deeply religious, more keenly conscious of the wonders of God and Man. And the Bible—surely no one can read the magic beauty and truth in the Prophecies of the Old Testament without feeling that he has met and talked with giants. These books bear directly on life—they make us think, love and experience in a way that we have never done before. The world becomes more thoroughly a magic place in which there are a thousand things to make life one glorious escapade, through which we may be thankful for the opportunity of living.

As some people believe reading to be a pleasant method of passing the time (without realizing that time is in truth passing them), so others believe that being "well read" is some sort of a social advantage. It is difficult to determine which is the more stupid and superficial point of view, that of regarding books as time-killers or as useful topics of conversation. The latter is probably the worst, as, in addition to its superficial aspect, there is its insincerity. The man or woman who reads a great book because it is "the thing to do" is not only a weak follower of fashion but a waster of valuable time. It is far better never to have read a book than to have read it stupidly and begrudgingly with the thought in mind that it will be a feather in your cap to be able to boast of having read it. Needless as it may seem to make a point of this, it is, nevertheless, the idea in the mind of many a man in college, and many a woman who joins a reading circle.