CHAPTER 8.
PERIODICAL LITERATURE.
The librarian who desires to make the management of his library in the highest degree successful, must give special attention to the important field of periodical literature. More and more, as the years roll on, the periodical becomes the successful rival of the book in the claim for public attention. Indeed, we hear now and then, denunciations of the ever-swelling flood of magazines and newspapers, as tending to drive out the book. Readers, we are told, are seduced from solid and improving reading, by the ma.s.s of daily, weekly, and monthly periodicals which lie in wait for them on every hand. But no indiscriminate censure of periodicals or of their reading, can blind us to the fact of their great value. Because some persons devote an inordinate amount of time to them, is no reason why we should fail to use them judiciously ourselves, or to aid others in doing so. And because many periodicals (and even the vast majority) are of little importance, and are filled with trifling and ephemeral matter, that fact does not discredit the meritorious ones.
Counterfeit currency does not diminish the value of the true coin; it is very sure to find its own just level at last; and so the wretched or the sensational periodical, however pretentious, will fall into inevitable neglect and failure in the long run.
It is true that the figures as to the relative issues of books and periodicals in the publishing world are startling enough to give us pause. It has been computed that of the annual product of the American press, eighty-two per cent. consists of newspapers, ten per cent. of magazines and reviews, and only eight per cent. of books. Yet this vast redundancy of periodical literature is by no means such a menace to our permanent literature as it appears at first sight;--and that for three reasons: (1) a large share of the books actually published, appear in the first instance in the periodicals in serial or casual form; (2) the periodicals contain very much matter of permanent value; (3) the steady increase of carefully prepared books in the publishing world, while it may not keep pace with the rapid increase of periodicals, evinces a growth in the right direction. It is no longer so easy to get a crude or a poor book published, as it was a generation ago. The standard of critical taste has risen, and far more readers are judges of what const.i.tutes a really good book than ever before. While it is true that our periodical product has so grown, that whereas there were twenty years ago, in 1878, only 7,958 different newspapers and magazines published in the United States, there are now, in 1899, over 20,500 issued, it can also be stated that the annual product of books has increased in the same twenty years from less than two thousand to more than five thousand volumes of new issues in a year. Whatever may be the future of our American literature, it can hardly be doubted that the tendency is steadily toward the production of more books, and better ones.
Whether a public library be large or small, its value to students will depend greatly upon the care and completeness with which its selection of periodical works is made, and kept up from year to year. Nothing is more common in all libraries, public and private, than imperfect and partially bound sets of serials, whether newspapers, reviews, magazines or the proceedings and reports of scientific and other societies. Nothing can be more annoying than to find the sets of such publications broken at the very point where the reference or the wants of those consulting them require satisfaction. In these matters, perpetual vigilance is the price of completeness; and the librarian who is not willing or able to devote the time and means requisite to complete the files of periodical publications under his charge is to be censured or commiserated, according to the causes of the failure. The first essential in keeping up the completeness of files of ephemeral publications, next to vigilance on the part of their custodian, is room for the arrangement of the various parts, and means for binding with prompt.i.tude. Some libraries, and among them a few of the largest, are so hampered for want of room, that their serials are piled in heaps without order or arrangement, and are thus comparatively useless until bound. In the more fortunate inst.i.tutions, which possess adequate s.p.a.ce for the orderly arrangement of all their stores, there can be no excuse for failing to supply any periodical, whether bound or unbound, at the moment it is called for. It is simply necessary to devote sufficient time each day to the systematic arrangement of all receipts: to keep each file together in chronological order; to supply them for the perusal of readers, with a proper check or receipt, and to make sure of binding each new volume as fast as the publication of t.i.tles and index enables it to be done properly. While some libraries receive several thousands of serials, the periodical publications taken by others amount to a very small number; but in either case, the importance of prompt collation and immediate supply of missing parts or numbers is equally imperative. While deficiencies in daily newspapers can rarely be made up after the week, and sometimes not after the day of their appearance, the missing parts of official and other publications, as well as of reviews and magazines appearing at less frequent intervals, can usually be supplied within the year, although a more prompt securing of them is often necessary. In these publications, as in the acquisition of books for any library, the collation of each part or number is imperative, in order to avoid imperfections which may be irreparable.
First in the ranks of these ephemeral publications, in order of number, if not of importance, come the journals of all cla.s.ses, daily and weekly, political, ill.u.s.trated, literary, scientific, mechanical, professional, agricultural, financial, etc. From the obscure and fugitive beginnings of journalism in the sixteenth century to the establishment of the first continuous newspaper--the London Weekly News, in 1622, and Renaudot"s Gazette (afterwards the _Gazette de France_) in 1631, followed by the issue of the first daily newspaper, the London Daily Courant, in 1702, and the Boston Weekly News-letter in 1704, (the first American journal)--to the wonderful fecundity of the modern periodical press, which scatters the leaves of more than thirty thousand different journals broadcast over the world, there is a long and interesting history of the trials and triumphs of a free press. In whatever respect American libraries may fall behind those of older lands (and their deficiencies are vast, and, in many directions permanent) it may be said with confidence, that in the United States the newspaper has received its widest and most complete development. Numerically, the fullest approximate return of the newspaper and periodical press gives a total number of 21,500 periodical publications, regularly appearing within the limits of the United States.
While no one library, however large and comprehensive, has either the s.p.a.ce or the means to acc.u.mulate a t.i.the of the periodicals that swarm from a productive press, there are valid reasons why more attention should be paid by the librarian to a careful preservation of a wise selection of the best of all this current literature. The modern newspaper and other periodical publications afford the fullest and truest, and on the whole, the most impartial image of the age we live in, that can be derived from a single source. Taken together, they afford the richest material for the historian, or the student of politics, of society, of literature, and of civilization in all its varied aspects.
What precious memorials of the day, even the advertis.e.m.e.nts and brief paragraphs of the newspapers of a century ago afford us! While in a field so vast, it is impossible for any one library to be more than a gleaner, no such inst.i.tution can afford to neglect the collection and preservation of at least some of the more important newspapers from year to year. A public library is not for one generation only, but it is for all time.
Opportunities once neglected of securing the current periodicals of any age in continuous and complete form seldom or never recur. The principle of selection will of course vary in different libraries and localities.
While the safest general rule is to secure the best and most representative of all the journals, reviews, and magazines within the limit of the funds which can be devoted to that purpose, there is another principle which should largely guide the selection. In each locality, it should be one leading object of the princ.i.p.al library to gather within its walls the fullest representation possible, of the literature relating to its own State and neighborhood. In every city and large town, the local journals and other periodicals should form an indispensable part of a public library collection. Where the means are wanting to purchase these, the proprietors will frequently furnish them free of expense, for public use; but no occasion should be lost of securing, immediately on its issue from the press, every publication, large or small, which relates to the local history or interests of the place where the library is maintained.
While the files of the journals of any period furnish unquestionably the best instruments for the history of that epoch, it is lamentable to reflect that so little care has ever been taken to preserve a fair representation of those of any age. The destiny of nearly all newspapers is swift destruction; and even those which are preserved, commonly survive in a lamentably fragmentary state. The obvious causes of the rapid disappearance of periodical literature, are its great volume, necessarily increasing with every year, the difficulty of lodging the files of any long period in our narrow apartments, and the continual demand for paper for the uses of trade. To these must be added the great cost of binding files of journals, increasing in the direct ratio of the size of the volume. As so formidable an expense can be incurred by very few private subscribers to periodicals, so much the more important is it that the public libraries should not neglect a duty which they owe to their generation, as well as to those that are to follow. These poor journals of to-day, which everybody is willing to stigmatize as trash, not worth the room to store or the money to bind, are the very materials which the man of the future will search for with eagerness, and for some of which he will be ready to pay their weight in gold. These representatives of the commercial, industrial, inventive, social, literary, political, moral and religious life of the times, should be preserved and handed down to posterity with sedulous care. No historian or other writer on any subject who would write conscientiously or with full information, can afford to neglect this fruitful mine of the journals, where his richest materials are frequently to be found.
In the absence of any great library of journals, or of that universal library which every nation should possess, it becomes the more important to a.s.semble in the various local libraries all those ephemeral publications, which, if not thus preserved contemporaneously with their issue, will disappear utterly, and elude the search of future historical inquirers. And that library which shall most sedulously gather and preserve such fugitive memorials of the life of the people among which it is situated will be found to have best subserved its purpose to the succeeding generations of men.
Not less important than the preservation of newspapers is that of reviews and magazines. In fact, the latter are almost universally recognized as far more important than the more fugitive literature of the daily and weekly press. Though inferior to the journals as historical and statistical materials, reviews and magazines supply the largest fund of discussion concerning such topics of scientific, social, literary, and religious interest as occupy the public mind during the time in which they appear. More and more the best thought of the times gets reflected in the pages of this portion of the periodical press. No investigator in any department can afford to overlook the rich stores contributed to thought in reviews and magazines. These articles are commonly more condensed and full of matter than the average books of the period. While every library, therefore, should possess for the current use and ultimate reference of its readers a selection of the best, as large as its means will permit, a great and comprehensive library, in order to be representative of the national literature, should possess them all.
The salient fact that the periodical press absorbs, year by year, more of the talent which might otherwise be expended upon literature of more permanent form is abundantly obvious. This tendency has both its good and its evil results. On the one hand, the best writing ability is often drawn out by magazines and journals, which are keen compet.i.tors for attractive matter, and for known reputations, and sometimes they secure both in combination. On the other hand, it is a notable fact that writers capable of excellent work often do great injustice to their reputations by producing too hastily articles written to order, instead of the well-considered, ripe fruits of their literary skill. Whether the brief article answering the limits of a magazine or a review is apt to be more or less superficial than a book treating the same topic, is a question admitting of different views. If the writer is capable of skilful condensation, without loss of grace of composition, or of graphic power, then the article, measured by its influence upon the public mind, must be preferred to the more diffuse treatise of the book. It has the immense advantage of demanding far less of the reader"s time; and whenever its conclusions are stated in a masterly way, its impression should be quite as lasting as that of any book treating a similar theme. Such is doubtless the effect of the abler articles written for periodicals, which are more condensed and full of matter in speedily available form, than the average book of the period. In this sense it is a misuse of terms to call the review article ephemeral, or to treat the periodicals containing them as perishable literary commodities, which serve their term with the month or year that produced them. On the contrary, the experience of librarians shows that the most sought-for, and the most useful contributions to any subject are frequently found, not in the books written upon it, but in the files of current periodicals, or in those of former years. It is especially to be noted that the book may frequently lose its adaptation and usefulness by lapse of time, and the onward march of science, while the article is apt to reflect the latest light which can help to ill.u.s.trate the subject.
While, therefore, there is always a liability of finding many crude and sketchy contributions in the literature of the periodical press, its conductors are ever on the alert to reduce to a minimum the weak or unworthy offerings, and to secure a maximum of articles embodying mature thought and fit expression. The p.r.o.nounced tendency toward short methods in every channel of human activity, is reflected in the constantly multiplying series of periodical publications.
The publishing activities of the times are taking on a certain cooperative element, which was not formerly known. Thus, the "literary syndicate" has been developed by degrees into one of the most far-reaching agencies for popular entertainment. The taste for short stories, in place of the ancient three volume novel, has been cultivated even in conservative England, and has become so wide-spread in the United States, that very few periodicals which deal in fiction at all, are without their stories begun and finished in a single issue. The talent required to produce a fascinating and successful fiction in this narrow compa.s.s is a peculiar one, and while there are numerous failures, there are also a surprising number of successes. Well written descriptive articles, too, are in demand, and special cravings for personal gossip and lively sketches of notable living characters are manifest. That perennial interest which mankind and womankind evince in every individual whose name, for whatever reason, has become familiar, supplies a basis for an inexhaustible series of light paragraphic articles. Another fruitful field for the syndicate composition is brief essays upon any topic of the times, the fashions, notable events, or new inventions, public charities, education, governmental doings, current political movements, etc. These appear almost simultaneously, in many different periodicals, scattered throughout the country, under the copyright _imprimatur_, which warns off all journals from republishing, which have not subscribed to the special "syndicate" engaging them. Thus each periodical secures, at extremely moderate rates, contributions which are frequently written by the most noted and popular living writers, who, in their turn, are much better remunerated for their work than they would be for the same amount of writing if published in book form. Whether this now popular method of attaining a wide and remunerative circulation for their productions will prove permanent, is less certain than that many authors now find it the surest road to profitable employment of their pens. The fact that it rarely serves to introduce unknown writers of talent to the reading world, may be laid to the account of the eagerness of the syndicates to secure names that already enjoy notoriety.
The best method for filing newspapers for current reading is a vexed question in libraries. In the large ones, where room enough exists, large reading-stands with sloping sides furnish the most convenient access, provided with movable metal rods to keep the papers in place. Where no room exists for these stands, some of the numerous portable newspaper-file inventions, or racks, may be subst.i.tuted, allowing one to each paper received at the library.
For filing current magazines, reviews, and the smaller newspapers, like the literary and technical journals, various plans are in use. All of these have advantages, while none is free from objection. Some libraries use the ordinary pamphlet case, in which the successive numbers are kept until a volume is acc.u.mulated for binding. This requires a separate case for each periodical, and where many are taken, is expensive, though by this method the magazines are kept neat and in order. Others use small newspaper files or tapes for periodicals. Others still arrange them alphabetically on shelves, in which case the latest issues are found on top, if the chronology is preserved. In serving periodicals to readers, tickets should be required (as for books) with t.i.tle and date, as a precaution against loss, or careless leaving upon tables.
Whether current periodicals are ever allowed to be drawn out, must depend upon several weighty considerations. When only one copy is taken, no circulation should be permitted, so that the magazines and journals may be always in, at the service of readers frequenting the library. But in some large public libraries, where several copies of each of the more popular serials are subscribed to, it is the custom to keep one copy (sometimes two) always in, and to allow the duplicate copies to be drawn out. This circulation should be limited to a period much shorter than is allowed for keeping books.
In no case, should the bound volumes of magazines, reviews, and journals of whatever kind be allowed to leave the library. This is a rule which should be enforced for the common benefit of all the readers, since to lend to one reader any periodical or work of general reference is to deprive all the rest of its use just so long as it is out of the library.
This has become all the more important since the publication of Poole"s Indexes to periodical literature has put the whole reading community on the quest for information to be found only (in condensed form, or in the latest treatment) in the volumes of the periodical press. And it is really no hardship to any quick, intelligent reader, to require that these valuable serials should be used within the library only. An article is not like a book;--a long and perhaps serious study, requiring many hours or days to master it. The magazine or review article, whatever other virtues it may lack, has the supreme merit of brevity.
The only valid exception which will justify loaning the serial volumes of periodicals outside the library, is when there are duplicate sets of any of them. Some large libraries having a wide popular circulation are able to buy two or more sets of the magazines most in demand, and so to lend one out, while another is kept constantly in for use and reference. And even a library of small means might secure for its shelves duplicate sets of many periodicals, by simply making known that it would be glad to receive from any families or other owners, all the numbers of their magazines, etc., which they no longer need for use. This would bring in, in any large town or city, a copious supply of periodicals which house-keepers, tired of keeping, storing and dusting such unsightly property, would be glad to bestow where they would do the most good.
Whatever periodicals are taken, it is essential to watch over their completeness by keeping a faithfully revised check-list. This should be ruled to furnish blank s.p.a.ces for each issue of all serials taken, whether quarterly, monthly, weekly, or daily, and no week should elapse without complete scrutiny of the list, and ordering all missing numbers from the publishers. Mail failures are common, and unceasing vigilance is the price that must be paid for completeness. The same check-list, by other s.p.a.ces, should show the time of expiration of subscriptions, and the price paid per year. And where a large number of periodicals are received, covering many parts of the country, they should be listed, not only by an alphabet of t.i.tles, but by another alphabet of places where published, as well.
If a new library is to be formed, having no sets of periodicals on which to build, effort should be made to secure full sets from the beginning of as many of the prominent magazines and reviews, American and foreign, as the funds will permit. It is expedient to wait a little, rather than to take up with incomplete sets, as full ones are pretty sure to turn up, and compet.i.tion between the many dealers should bring down prices to a fair medium. In fact, many old sets of magazines are offered surprisingly cheap, and usually well-bound. But vigilant care must be exercised to secure perfect sets, as numbers are often mutilated, or deficient in some pages or ill.u.s.trations. This object can only be secured by collation of every volume, page by page, with due attention to the list of ill.u.s.trations, if any are published.
In the absence of British bibliographical enterprise (a want much to be deplored) it has fallen to the lot of American librarians to produce the only general index of subjects to English periodical literature which exists. Poole"s Index to Periodical Literature is called by the name of its senior editor, the late Dr. Wm. F. Poole, and was contributed to by many librarians on a cooperative division of labor, in indexing, under direction of Mr. Wm. I. Fletcher, librarian of Amherst College. This index to leading periodicals is literally invaluable, and indispensable as an aid to research. Its first volume indexes in one alphabet the periodicals embraced, from their first issues up to 1882. The second volume runs from 1882 to 1887, and the third covers the period from 1887 to 1891, while a fourth volume indexes the periodicals from 1892 to 1896, inclusive. For 1897, and each year after, an annual index to the publications of the year is issued.
Besides this, the _Review of Reviews_ publishes monthly an index to one month"s leading periodicals, and also an annual index, very full, in a single alphabet. And the "c.u.mulative Index," issued both monthly and quarterly, by W. H. Brett, the Cleveland, Ohio, librarian, is an admirably full means of keeping our keys to periodical literature up to date. There are other indexes to periodicals, published monthly or quarterly, too numerous to be noticed here. The annual _New York Tribune_ Index (the only daily journal, except the _London Times_, which prints an index) is highly useful, and may be used for other newspapers as well, for the most important events or discussions, enabling one to search the dailies for himself, the date once being fixed by aid of the index.
Mention should also be made here of the admirably comprehensive annual "_Rowell"s Newspaper Directory_," which should rather be called the "American Periodical Directory," since it has a cla.s.sified catalogue of all periodicals published in the United States and Canada.
CHAPTER 9.
THE ART OF READING.
"The true University of these days," says a great scholar of our century, Thomas Carlyle, "is a collection of books, and all education is to teach us how to read."
If there were any volume, out of the mult.i.tude of books about books that have been written, which could illuminate the pathway of the unskilled reader, so as to guide him into all knowledge by the shortest road, what a boon that book would be!
When we survey the vast and rapidly growing product of the modern press,--when we see these hosts of poets without imagination, historians without accuracy, critics without discernment, and novelists without invention or style, in short, the whole prolific brood of writers who do not know how to write,--we are tempted to echo the sentiment of Wordsworth:--
"The intellectual power, through words and things, Goes sounding on a dim and perilous way."
The most that any one can hope to do for others is to suggest to them a clue which, however feeble, has helped to guide his uncertain footsteps through the labyrinthian maze of folly and wisdom which we call literature.
The knowledge acquired by a Librarian, while it may be very wide and very varied, runs much risk of being as superficial as it is diversified.
There is a very prevalent, but very erroneous notion which conceives of a librarian as a kind of animated encyclopaedia, who, if you tap him in any direction, from A to Z, will straightway pour forth a flood of knowledge upon any subject in history, science, or literature. This popular ideal, however fine in theory, has to undergo what commercial men call a heavy discount when reduced to practice. The librarian is a constant and busy worker in far other fields than exploring the contents of books. His day is filled with cataloguing, arranging and cla.s.sifying them, searching catalogues, selecting new books, correspondence, directing a.s.sistants, keeping library records, adjusting accounts, etc., in the midst of which he is constantly at the call of the public for books and information.
What time has he, wearied by the day"s multifarious and exacting labors, for any thorough study of books? So, when anyone begins an inquiry with, "You know everything; can you tell me,"--I say: "Stop a moment; omniscience is not a human quality; I really know very few things, and am not quite sure of some of them." There are many men, and women, too, in almost every community, whose range of knowledge is more extended than that of most librarians.
The idea, then, that because one lives perpetually among books, he absorbs all the learning that they contain, must be abandoned as a popular delusion. To know a little upon many subjects is quite compatible with not knowing much about any one. "Beware of the man of one book," is an ancient proverb, pregnant with meaning. The man of one book, if it is wisely chosen, and if he knows it all, can sometimes confound a whole a.s.sembly of scholars. An American poet once declared to me that all leisure time is lost that is not spent in reading Shakespeare. And we remember Emerson"s panegyric upon Plato"s writings, borrowing from the Caliph Omar his famous (but apocryphal) sentence against all books but the Koran: "Burn all the libraries, for their value is in this book." So Sheffield, duke of Buckingham:
"Read Homer once, and you can read no more, For all books else appear so tame, so poor, Verse will seem prose, but still persist to read, And Homer will be all the books you need."
Of course I am far from designing to say anything against the widest study, which great libraries exist to supply and to encourage; and all utterances of a half-truth, like the maxim I have quoted, are exaggerations. But the saying points a moral--and that is, the supreme importance of thoroughness in all that we undertake. The poetical wiseacre who endowed the world with the maxim, "A little learning is a dangerous thing," does not appear to have reflected upon the logical sequence of the dictum, namely: that if a little learning upon any subject is dangerous, then less must be still more dangerous.
The art of reading to the best advantage implies the command of adequate time to read. The art of having time to read depends upon knowing how to make the best use of our days. Days are short, and time is fleeting, but no one"s day ever holds less than 24 hours. Engrossing as one"s occupation may be, it need never consume all the time remaining from sleep, refreshment and social intercourse. The half hour before breakfast, the fifteen minutes waiting for dinner, given to the book you wish to read, will soon finish it, and make room for another. The busiest men I have known have often been the most intelligent, and the widest readers. The idle person never knows how to make use of odd moments; the busy one always knows how. Yet the vast majority of people go through life without ever learning the great lesson of the supreme value of moments.
Let us suppose that you determine to devote two hours every day to reading. That is equivalent to more than seven hundred hours a year, or to three months of working time of eight hours a day. What could you not do in three months, if you had all the time to yourself? You could almost learn a new language, or master a new science; yet this two hours a day, which would give you three months of free time every year, is frittered away, you scarcely know how, in aimless matters that lead to nothing.
A famous writer of our century, some of whose books you have read,--Edward Bulwer Lytton,--devoted only four hours a day to writing; yet he produced more than sixty volumes of fiction, poetry, drama and criticism, of singular literary merit. The great naturalist, Darwin, a chronic sufferer from a depressing malady, counted two hours a fortunate day"s work for him; yet he accomplished results in the world of science which render his name immortal.
Be not over particular as to hours, or the time of day, and you will soon find that all hours are good for the muse. Have a purpose, and adhere to it with good-humored pertinacity. Be independent of the advice and opinions of others; the world of books, like the world of nature, was made for you; possess it in your own way. If you find no good in ancient history or in metaphysics, let them alone and read books of art, or poetry, or biography, or voyages and travels. The wide domain of knowledge and the world of books are so related, that all roads cross and converge, like the paths that carry us over the surface of the globe on which we live. Many a reader has learned more of past times from good biographies, than from any formal history; and it is a fact that many owe to the plays of Shakespeare and the novels of Walter Scott nearly all the knowledge which they possess of the history of England and Scotland.
It is unhappily true that books do not teach the use of books. The art of extracting what is important or instructive in any book, from the ma.s.s of verbiage that commonly overlays it, cannot be learned by theory.
Invaluable as the art of reading is, as a means of enlightenment, its highest uses can only be obtained by a certain method of reading, which will separate the wheat from the chaff. Different readers will, of course, possess different capacities for doing this. Young or undisciplined minds can read only in one way,--and that way is, to mentally p.r.o.nounce every word, and dwell equally upon all the parts of every sentence. This comes naturally in the first instance, from the mere method of learning to read, in which every word is a spoken symbol, and has to be sounded, whether it is essential to the sense, or not. This habit of reading, which may be termed the literal method, goes with most persons through life. Once learned, it is very hard to unlearn. There are mult.i.tudes who cannot read a newspaper, even, without dwelling upon every word, and coming to a full stop at the end of every sentence. Now this method of reading, while it may be indispensable to all readers at some time, and to some readers at all times, is too slow and fruitless for the student who aims to absorb the largest amount of knowledge in the briefest s.p.a.ce of time. Life is too short to be wasted over the rhetoric or the periods of an author whose knowledge we want as all that concerns us.
Doubtless there are cla.s.ses of literature in which form or expression predominates, and we cannot read poetry, for example, or the drama, or even the higher cla.s.s of fiction, without lingering upon the finer pa.s.sages, to get the full impression of their beauty. In reading works of the imagination, we read not for ideas alone, but for expression also, and to enjoy the rhythm and melody of the verse, if it be poetry, or, if prose, the finished rhetoric, and the pleasing cadence of the style. It is here that the literary skill of an accomplished writer, and all that we understand by rhetoric, becomes important, while in reading for information only, we may either ignore words and phrases entirely, or subordinate them to the ideas which they convey. In reading any book for the knowledge it contains, I should as soon think of spelling out all the words, as of reading out all the sentences. Just as, in listening to a slow speaker, you divine the whole meaning of what he is about to say, before he has got half through his sentence, so, in reading, you can gather the full sense of the ideas which any sentence contains, without stopping to accentuate the words.
Leaving aside the purely literary works, in which form or style is a predominant element, let us come to books of science, history, biography, voyages, travels, etc. In these, the primal aim is to convey information, and thus the style of expression is little or nothing--the thought or the fact is all. Yet most writers envelop the thought or the fact in so much verbiage, complicate it with so many episodes, beat it out thin, by so much iteration and reiteration, that the student must needs learn the art of skipping, in self-defense. To one in zealous pursuit of knowledge, to read most books through is paying them too extravagant a compliment. He has to read between the lines, as it were, to note down a fact here, or a thought there, or an ill.u.s.tration elsewhere, and leaves alone all that contributes nothing to his special purpose. As the quick, practiced eye glances over the visible signs of thought, page after page is rapidly absorbed, and a book which would occupy an ordinary reader many days in reading, is mastered in a few hours.