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The Guide to Reading — the Pocket University Volume XXIII by Various
page 5 of 103 (04%)
student needs. The room is barren of ornament. Each student is hard at
--work examining, comparing, collating. She is to be called on to-morrow
in class to tell what she has learned, or next week to hand in a thesis
the product of her study. All eyes are intent upon the allotted task;
no one looks up to see you when you enter. In the same building is
another room which I will call The Lounge, though I think it bears a
different name. The books are upon shelves around the wall and all are
within easy reach. Many of them are fine editions. A wood fire is
burning in the great fireplace. The room is furnished with sofas and
easy chairs. No one is at work. No one is talking. No! but they are
listening--listening to authors whose voices have long since been
silent in death.

In every home there ought to be books that are friends. In every day,
at least in every week, there ought to be some time which can be spent
in cultivating their friendship. This is reading, and reading is very
different from study.

The student has been at work all the morning with his tools. He has
been studying a question of Constitutional Law: What are the powers of
the President of the United States? He has examined the Constitution;
then Willoughby or Watson on the Constitution; then he turns to The
Federalist; then perhaps to the Constitutional debates, or to the
histories, such as Von Holst's Constitutional History of the United
States, or to treatises, such as Bryce's American Commonwealth. He
compares the different opinions, weighs them, deliberates, endeavors to
reach a decision. Wearied with his morning pursuit of truth through a
maze of conflicting theories, he puts his tools by and goes to dinner.
In the evening he sits down in the same library for an hour with his
friends. He selects his friend according to his mood. Macaulay carries
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