s, 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