No. We will trust to conversation with the others, who have had their
different paths in this picnic party of ours, to learn from them just the
brightest and best things that they have seen and heard. And we will try
to be able to tell them, simply and truly, the best things we find on our
own paths. Now, for selecting the path, what shall we do,--since one
cannot in one little life attempt them all?

You can select for yourself, if you will only keep a cool head, and have
your eyes open. First of all, remember that what you want from books is
the information in them, and the stimulus they give to you, and the
amusement for your recreation. You do not read for the poor pleasure of
saying you have read them. You are reading for the subject, much more than
for the particular book, and if you find that you have exhausted all the
book has on your subject, then you are to leave that book, whether you
have read it through or not. In some cases you read because the author's
own mind is worth knowing; and then the more you read the better you know
him. But these cases do not affect the rule. You read for what is in the
books, not that you may mark such a book off from a "course of reading,"
or say at the next meeting of the "Philogabblian Society" that you "have
just been reading Kant" or "Godwin." What is the subject, then, which you
want to read upon?

Half the boys and girls who read this have been so well trained that they
know. They know what they want to know. One is sure that she wants to know
more about Mary Queen of Scots; another, that he wants to know more about
fly-fishing; another, that she wants to know more about the Egyptian
hieroglyphics; another, that he wants to know more about propagating new
varieties of pansies; another, that she wants to know more about "The Ring
and the Book"; another, that he wants to know more about the "Tenure of
Office bill" Happy is this half. To know your ignorance is the great first