and there is time to read it all twice over. We--Americans--bolt our
books as we do our food, and so get far too little good out of them. We
treat our mental digestions as brutally as we treat our stomachs.
Meditation is the digestion of the mind, but we allow ourselves no time
for meditation. We gorge our eyes with the printed page, but all too
little of what we take in with our eyes ever reaches our minds or our
spirits. We assimilate what we can from all this hurry of superfluous
food, and the rest goes to waste, and, as a natural consequence,
contributes only to the wear and tear of our mental organism.

Books should be real things. They were so once, when a man would give a
fat field in exchange for a small manuscript; and they are no less real
to-day--some of them. Each age contributes one or two real books to the
eternal library--and always the old books remain, magic springs of
healing and refreshment. If no one should write a book for a thousand
years, there are quite enough books to keep us going. Real books there
are in plenty. Perhaps there are more real books than there are real
readers. Books are the strong tincture of experience. They are to be
taken carefully, drop by drop, not carelessly gulped down by the
bottleful. Therefore, if you would get the best out of books, spend a
quarter of an hour in reading, and three-quarters of an hour in
thinking over what you have read.




THE GUIDE TO DAILY
READING

PREPARED BY