The Guide to Reading the Pocket University Volume XXIII
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THE
POCKET UNIVERSITY
VOLUME XXIII
THE GUIDE TO
READING
EDITED BY
DR. LYMAN ABBOTT,
ASA DON DICKINSON
AND OTHERS
CONTENTS
BOOKS FOR STUDY AND READING
By Lyman Abbott
THE PURPOSE OF READING
By John Macy
How TO GET THE BEST Out OF BOOKS
By Richard Le Gallienne
THE GUIDE TO DAILY READING
By Asa Don Dickinson
GENERAL INDEX OF AUTHORS
GENERAL INDEX OF TITLES
THE POCKET UNIVERSITY
Books for Study and Reading
BY LYMAN ABBOTT
There are three services which books may render in the home: they may
be ornaments, tools, or friends.
I was told a few years ago the following story which is worth retelling
as an illustration of the use of books as ornaments. A millionaire who
had one house in the city, one in the mountains, and one in the South,
wished to build a fourth house on the seashore. A house ought to have a
library. Therefore this new house was to have a library. When the house
was finished he found the library shelves had been made so shallow that
they would not take books of an ordinary size. His architect proposed
to change the bookshelves. The millionaire did not wish the change
made, but told his architect to buy fine bindings of classical books
and glue them into the shelves. The architect on making inquiries
discovered that the bindings would cost more than slightly shop-worn
editions of the books themselves. So the books were bought, cut in two
from top to bottom about in the middle, one half thrown away, and the
other half replaced upon the shelves that the handsome backs presented
the same appearance they would have presented if the entire book had
been there. Then the glass doors were locked, the key to the glass
doors lost, and sofas and chairs and tables put against them. Thus the
millionaire has his library furnished with handsome bindings and these
I may add are quite adequate for all the use which he wishes to make of
them.
This is a rather extreme case of the use of books as ornaments, but it
illustrates in a bizarre way what is a not uncommon use. There is this
to be said for that illiterate millionaire: well-bound books are
excellent ornaments. No decoration with wall paper or fresco can make a
parlor as attractive as it can be made with low bookshelves filled with
works of standard authors and leaving room above for statuary, or
pictures, or the inexpensive decoration of flowers picked from one's
own garden. I am inclined to think that the most attractive parlor I
have ever visited is that of a bookish friend whose walls are thus
furnished with what not only delights the eye, but silently invites the
mind to an inspiring companionship.
More important practically than their use as ornaments is the use of
books as tools. Every professional man needs his special tools--the
lawyer his law books, the doctor his medical books, the minister his
theological treatises and his Biblical helps. I can always tell when I
go into a clergyman's study by looking at his books whether he is
living in the Twentieth Century or in the Eighteenth. Tools do not make
the man, but they make his work and so show what the man is.
Every home ought to have some books that are tools and the children
should be taught how to use them. There should be at least an atlas, a
dictionary, and an encyclopadia. If in the evening when the family talk
about the war in the Balkans the father gets out the atlas and the
children look to see where Roumania and Bulgaria and Greece and
Constantinople and the Dardanelles are on the map, they will learn more
of real geography in half an hour than they will learn in a week of
school study concerning countries in which they have no interest. When
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