In action for damages Fry versus Fish;
But sure, if for damages action could lie,
It certainly must have been Fish against Fry.”
Wise Words on Reading.
One of the common errors of the day is indulgence in indiscriminate reading. The greater the number of books the more careful readers ought to be in the choice of them, and as a guide to their value nothing could be better than the following wise words of Southey:—
“Young readers, you whose hearts are open, whose understandings are not yet hardened, and whose feelings are neither exhausted nor encrusted with the world, take from me a better rule than any professors of criticism will teach you.
“Would you know whether the tendency of a book is good or evil, examine in what state of mind you lay it down. Has it induced you to suspect that what you have been accustomed to think unlawful may after all be innocent, and that that may be harmless which you have hitherto been taught to think dangerous? Has it tended to make you dissatisfied and impatient under the control of others, and disposed you to relax in that self-government without which both the laws of God and man tell us there can be no virtue, and consequently no happiness? Has it attempted to abate your admiration and reverence for what is great and good, and to diminish in you a love of your country and of your fellow creatures? Has it addressed itself to your pride, your vanity, your selfishness, or any of your evil propensities? Has it defiled the imagination with what is loathsome, and shocked the heart with what is monstrous? Has it distracted the sense of right and wrong which the Creator has implanted in the human soul?
“If so—if you have felt that such were the effects it was intended to produce—throw the book into the fire, whatever name it may bear upon the title-page. Throw it into the fire, young man, though it should have been the gift of a friend; young lady, away with the whole set, though it should be the prominent furniture in the rosewood bookcase.”
Taught by a Robin.—I am sent to the ant to learn industry, to the dove to learn innocence, to the serpent to learn wisdom, and why not to the robin redbreast, who chants as delightfully in winter as in summer, to learn equanimity and patience?
Hands and Feet.