disorganized. We do not read Thackeray for ease; we read him for
Thackeray and enjoy his ease by the way.

We must read a book for all there is in it or we shall get little or
nothing. To be masters of books we must have learned to let books
master us. This is true of books that we are required to read, such as
text-books, and of those we read voluntarily and at leisure. The law of
reading is to give a book its due and a little more. The art of reading
is to know how to apply this law. For there is an art of reading, for
each of us to learn for himself, a private way of making the
acquaintance of books.

Macaulay, whose mind was never hurried or confused, learned to read
very rapidly, to absorb a page at a glance. A distinguished professor,
who has spent his life in the most minutely technical scholarship,
surprised us one day by commending to his classes the fine art of
"skipping." Many good books, including some most meritorious "three-
decker" novels, have their profitless pages, and it is useful to know
by a kind of practised instinct where to pause and reread and where to
run lightly and rapidly over the page. It is a useful accomplishment
not only in the reading of fiction, but in the business of life, to the
man of affairs who must get the gist of a mass of written matter, and
to the student of any special subject.

Usually, of course, a book that is worth reading at all is worth
reading carefully. Thoroughness of reading is the first thing to preach
and to practise, and it is perhaps dangerous to suggest to a beginner
that any book should be skimmed. The suggestion will serve its purpose
if it indicates that there are ways to read, that practice in reading
is like practice in anything else; the more one does, and the more