Perhaps this experience is what prompted Dr. Johnson’s dictum, “Read anything for five hours a day, and you will soon be learned.”
The great majority, however, of the girls who scan this page have not “five hours a day” to spend in pasturing among books, and need advice how to parcel out the very limited leisure they possess to the best possible advantage.
How shall they read? This is to the full as important a question as the one which follows—What shall they read?
To begin with; they should husband the precious moments for reading. You daughters in leisurely homes who are conscious now and then of a vague desire for more mental resources—your moments are not precious! You pass your days from morning to night in doing “nothing particular.” Are you making the best use of your time in this respect? How many hours a week do you spend in reading—that is, of reading what is not entirely ephemeral? Are you not content to “take as read” the great mass of English literature? And yet, do you know how far you have it in your own power to add to the delight and worth of life?
The days of many girls at home must needs be desultory—a little practising, a little housekeeping, a little bicycling, a little visiting and seeing visitors, a little shopping and attention to dress—and the evening comes, and not a page has been read or a new idea gained. An infinity of trifles makes up the day’s routine—the girl is always busy, and yet at the close of the week she seems to have accomplished nothing.
To such a girl we may commend the advice of Matthew Arnold, quoted in our last paper, to make a space for reading, and keep to it, in spite of all interruptions. But to the larger class who crave for self-culture and have only a little leisure, we would say with deep sympathy—make the most of what you have. On your way to and from your daily work, in odd moments of freedom, you will find it a delightful rest and refreshment to turn to some favourite volume. It is a truism, but is by no means thoroughly understood even yet, that a startling amount can be accomplished in odds and ends of time. One of the best read men we know is a busy lawyer. From morning to night he is at his office; in the evening he is often engaged in philanthropic work; but he always carries a small volume about with him and has learnt to make the most of odd moments. That is the way to become a great reader. The wish to read is the one necessary element in the matter; then the habit grows with exercise.
People generally do manage to obtain that on which they set their heart of hearts. The writer has observed that, however poor her young friends may profess themselves to be, they never seem debarred by straitness of cash from acquiring a bicycle; however poor and abject a man may be, he never seems too poor to become tipsy, if he is so inclined; and few people who wish to read will be too poor in time or cash to indulge the taste.
The biographies of great men are full of what can be accomplished by treasuring spare moments. Dr. Mason Good, a doctor in full practice, translated Lucretius while driving in his carriage through the streets of London. Dr. Erasmus Darwin composed all his works in the same way in the country, writing down his thoughts on little scraps of paper. Kirke White learned Greek while walking to and from a lawyer’s office. Elihu Burritt, who was a well-known character in his day and lived as United States Consul for twenty-two years in Birmingham, was only a blacksmith to begin with. While working at his forge he mastered some eighteen ancient and modern languages and twenty-two European dialects. Afterwards he made translations from the Icelandic, Arabic and Hebrew.
“All that I have accomplished, or expect, or hope to accomplish,” he said, “has been, and will be, by that plodding, patient, persevering process of accretion which builds the ant-heap—particle by particle, thought by thought, fact by fact. And if ever I was actuated by ambition, its highest and warmest aspiration reached no further than the hope to set before the young men of my country an example in employing those invaluable fragments of time called ‘odd moments.’”
Are not these, and many other such examples, written in the pages of “Smiles”? Rather startling and dismaying to the ordinary reader, we may confess them to be! Nor do we suppose that any of our girl readers will emulate them. We simply quote them to show that “lack of time” need not be a valid reason, with the majority of busy people, against self-culture.