OUR YOUNG MEN’S COLUMN.

Temuka Leader, Issue 2268, 17 October 1891, Page 3

OUR YOUNG MEN’S COLUMN.

[By Juvenis.] No. IL BEADING. In purchasing books 1 -would advise all young men to obtain neatly and strongly bound ones if possible, as they stand handling more than the glaringly painted trash. Having purchased a good book, one which you have heard your friends speak highly of.—(1) Open it at the title page, and read carefully who the author is, and all information concerning the book in the preface. If you know nothing - of the life of the author, then endeavor to |J learn what you can of him from friends * and books. (2) See how many chapters the book contains, and what are the salient points and contents of each. Then shut the book and try to recall the number of chapters and contents of each. If you cannot, review them till you can, and then you have a skeleton of the book. (3) Now read the first chapter through carefully, keeping your mind on the subject and drawing. comparisons while you read. When you have finished shut the book again and see if you have a clear understanding of the contents and purport of its teachings. If it be faintly impressed on the mind, read it over again, and so on with every chapter to the finis, then again recall its teachings and contents. If you persevere in this way you will in a very short time be able to master a book with perfect ease and the exertion will develope your faculty of concentration, and thus increase your power of study. There are other ways of extending your knowledge in the understanding of a certain book such as conversing with intelligent companions on it. In reading, as in everything else, there must be variety, otherwise the study becomes irksome and tedious. Sir John Lubbock in his “Pleasures of Life” says that jnany readers miss much of the pleasure of reading by forcing themselves to dwell too long continuously on one subject. Whereas, if they had two, or, still better, three books on different subjects, and one of them being of an amusing character, they would probably find that by changing as soon as they felt at all weary they would come back again and again to each with renewed zest.” When James A. Garfield was at Williams College in June 1854, he was during the summer vacation, turned loose in the college library with weeks of leisure to range over the shelves. After about six months at college he had devoured such an immense amount of serious reading that he began to suffer from intellectual dyspepsia. He then prescribed for himself one novel a month and on this medicine his mind speedily recuperated. Coopers’ « Leather-stocking Tales ” were the first novels he read and afterwards Sir Walter Scotts’s. A good plan m reading a book is to keep a pencil handy for use in marking passages which strike one as being suitable for future reference, and also for jotting down original thoughts which must occur to you, if you have any imagination, as you proceed. Then you should of necessity keep at your side a dictionary to turn up any word which may appear ambiguous, this will not only give you a better knowledge « of the book, but will also increase your A-vocabulary. You should not only read a book but you should expand on it. That is, you should take every opportunity of expanding the thoughts it contains by writing short original essays, looking at them from a different standpoint. If the ideas are practicable make an application of them in daily life. I have said nothing about what books are the best books for a young man to read for various reasons. I think it within •.the province of any sensible young man to choose his own books. The books that :suit one may not suit another. Sir John Lubbock in hk “Pleasures of Life ” has

marked out a list of 100 books and a youngman can hardly go wrong in making a selection of some of them. The first on the list is the Bible, then scattered here and there are the works of Shakespeare, Chaucer, Milton, Spencer, Scott, Wordsworth, Southey, Pope, Bums, Carlyle, Hume, Goldsmith, Sheridan, Macauley, Addison. Emerson, Thackeray, Dickens, Lytton, George Elliott, and Kingsley. He does not forget Smiles’s “ Self Help,” which book has been an encouragement to many a young man.