The art of skipping is, in a word, the art of noting and shunning that which is bad, or frivolous, or misleading, or unsuitable for one's individual needs. If you are convinced that the book or the chapter is bad, you cannot drop it too quickly. If it is simply idle and foolish, put it away on that account,—unless you are properly seeking amusement from idleness and frivolity. If it is so deceitful and disingenuous, your task is not so easy, but your conscience will give you warning, and the sharp examination which should follow, will tell you that you are in poor literary company.

But there are a great many books which are good in themselves, and yet are not good at all times or for all readers. No book, indeed, is of universal value and appropriateness. As has been said in previous chapters of this series, the individual must always dare to remember that he has his own legitimate tastes and wants, and that it is not only proper to follow them, but highly improper to permit them to be overruled by the tastes and wants of others. It is right for one to neglect entirely, or to skip through, pages which another should study again and again. Let each reader ask himself: Why am I reading this? What service will it be to me? Am I neglecting something else that would be more beneficial? Here, as in every other question involved in the choice of books, the golden key to knowledge, a key that will only fit its own proper doors, is purpose.

.

.

Admitting thus the utility of the reading of periodicals, and even insisting upon the necessity and duty of reading them, it must nevertheless be said in the plainest manner that an alarming amount of time

is wasted over them, or worse than wasted.

"To learn

to choose what is valuable and to skip the rest " is a good rule for reading periodicals; and it is a rule whose observance will reduce, by fully one half, the time devoted to them, and will save time and strength for better intellectual employments, to say nothing of the very important fact that discipline in this line will prevent the reader from falling into that demoralising and altogether disgraceful inability to hold the mind upon any continuous subject of thought or study, which is pretty sure to follow in the train of undue or thoughtless reading of periodicals. And when, as too often happens, a man comes to read nothing save his morning paper at breakfast or on the train, and his evening paper after his day's work is over, that man's brain, so far as reading is concerned, is only half alive. It cannot carry on a long train of thought or study; it notes superficial things rather than inner principles; it seeks to be amused or stimulated, rather than to be instructed. The Choice of Books.

CHARLES BRAY. b. 1811 [Living].

Habit is as supreme in mind as in body, and the object of moral culture is to make virtue into a habit. There are two habits, which, although they have not yet been classed among the virtues, are yet each worth a fortune in itself. One is a habit of looking at the bright side of things; the other is a taste for good reading, which may be formed into a habit by cultivation. I have cultivated both, on principle, and my happiness is now mainly dependent upon them. The

habitual state of my mind is one of cheerfulness, which the external world now finds it very difficult to depress. However untoward outside things may be, my mind soon springs back to its natural state, which is a happy one. For this I claim no merit; I cannot help it; the mind does so unconsciously, and this, I maintain, is the effect of culture, and is dependent in great measure upon the way I have accustomed myself to look at things. Carlyle, in his "Reminiscences of his Father," vol. i., p. 9, says, "A virtue he had which I should learn to imitate. He never spoke of what was disagreeable and past. I have often wondered and admired at this. The thing that he had nothing to do with, he did nothing with." I took people for what they were, and was not annoyed that they were not better; consequently I gave no admission to envy, hatred, malice, or any kind of uncharitableI knew there was good in all, and I appealed to that when I could find it, and if I could not find it, or if people, whether good or bad, were distasteful to me, and tended to create bad feeling in me, I kept out of their way. It may have been cowardly, but I dodged the evil rather than contend; I did not see that anyone had a right to disturb my habitual calm. It is better to wait, if you can, and many evils will cure themselves, or you will get used to the new circumstances. As the Spanish proverb "If you cannot have what you like, you must try to like what you have." I always tried never to look at what I had lost, but at what I had left. The tone of mind, as to whether joy or sorrow shall habitually prevail, depends upon culture; and culture

ness.

says,

means exercise, and exercise begets habit, and in this case, habitual cheerfulness is the result.

The second thing, as already mentioned, upon which my happiness has been greatly dependent, is the taste for good reading. By good reading I mean not mere newspapers, magazines, novels, and light literature, but such first-class works as enable you to travel not only over the whole world of nature, but of thought. A man who has acquired such a taste has never a spare moment or a dull one, unless when dreadfully bored by society, from which he escapes as much as possible. People are in general far too busy to read to serious purpose when they are young, except when studying for a profession they think there will be time for higher reading when they get old. But, like many other things so deferred, that time never comes to most of us, since it is the result only of early cultivation. We ought always to have a good book on hand which we make time to read every day.

Books to me, that is those new; the books may be Every seven years gives

As regards my present condition, I never have a minute to spare, or a minute that I cannot fill pleasurably. I have a heap of books for every varied mood, so that they never bore me. of our best writers, are ever the same, but I am changed. me a different, often a higher, appreciation of those I like. Every good book is worth reading three times at least.-Phases of Opinion and Experience During a Long Life. An Autobiography, by Charles Bray, Author of The ". Philosophy of Necessity." [Privately Printed.]

ANONYMOUS AUTHORS.

ment.

Book-love is a home-feeling-a sweet bond of family union-and a never-failing source of domestic enjoyIt sheds a charm over the quiet fireside, unlocks the hidden sympathies of human hearts, beguiles the weary hours of sickness or solitude, and unites kindred spirits in a sweet companionship of sentiment and idea. It sheds a gentle and humanising influence over its votaries, and woos even sorrow itself into a temporary forgetfulness.

Book-love is the good angel that keeps watch by the poor man's hearth, and hallows it; saving him from the temptations that lurk beyond its charmed circle; giving him new thoughts and noble aspirations, and lifting him, as it were, from the mere mechanical drudgery of his every-day occupation. The wife blesses it, as she sits smiling and sewing, alternately listening to her husband's voice, or hushing the child upon her knee. She blesses it for keeping him near her, and making him cheerful, and manly, and kindhearted,-albeit understanding little of what he reads, and reverencing it for that reason all the more in him.

Book-love is a physician! and has many a healing balm to relieve, even where it cannot cure, the weary sickness of mind and body-many a powerful opiate to soothe us into a sweet and temporary forgetfulness. In cases of lingering convalescence, its aid is invaluable.