weaving, or shoe-making, for methods of shop-window decoration or of
display-advertising, for special forms of bookkeeping suitable for
factories or for stock-farms--for a host of facts relating to trades,
occupations, and business in general. Yet there are books about all these
things--not books perhaps to read for an idle hour, but books full of meat
for them who want just this kind of food. If Book-taught Bilkins fails,
after trying to utilize what such books have taught him, it is doubtless
because he has previously failed to realize that books plus experience,
or, to put it differently, the recorded experience of others plus our own
is better than either could be separately. And the same is true of
information that calls for no physical action to supplement it. Books plus
thought--the thoughts of others plus our own--are more effective in
combination than either could be by itself. Reading should provoke
thought; thought should suggest more reading, and so on, until others'
thoughts and our own have become so completely amalgamated that they are
our personal intellectual possessions.

But we may not read for information at all--recreation may be what we are
after. Do not misunderstand me. Many persons have an idea that if one
reads to amuse himself he must necessarily read novels. I think most
highly of good novels. Narrative is a popular form of literary expression;
it is used by those who wish to instruct as well as to amuse. One may
obtain plenty of information from novels--often in a form nowhere else
available. If we want exact statement, statistical or otherwise, we do not
go to fiction for it; but if we wish to obtain what is often more
important--accurate and lasting general impressions of history, society,
or geography, the novel is often the only place where these may be had.
Likewise, one may amuse himself with history, travel, science, or
art--even with mathematics. The last is rarely written primarily to amuse,
although we have such a title as "Mathematical recreations," but there are