funereal music. Some of the old
Welsh hymn tunes he regarded as unique in their wistfulness and devout
aspiration; and as for Welsh choral singing, he thought it was
matchless for richness, fire and harmony.

CHAPTER IX

LITERATURE AND ETHICS

_Without the blessing of reading the burden of life would be
intolerable and the riches of life reduced to the merest penury._

GLADSTONE.

_The taste for reading stores the mind with pleasant thoughts,
banishes ennui, fills up the unoccupied interstices and enforced
leisures of an active life; and if it is judiciously managed it is
one of the most powerful means of training character and
disciplining and elevating thought. To acquire this taste in early
life is one of the best fruits of education._

LECKY: "THE MAP OF LIFE."

From his childhood Paul Jones had been a voracious and an omnivorous
reader. He read with amazing rapidity. The first book he enjoyed
whole-heartedly was Mabel Dearmer's "Noah's Ark Geography," one of the
best children's books written in the past twenty years. He read and
re-read this book as a little boy and used to talk lovingly of Kit and
his friends, Jum-Jum and the Cockyolly Bird. Alas! Kit (Mrs. Dearmer's
son Christopher) and his gifted mother have been claimed as victims by
the World War. Paul revelled in "AEsop's Fables," "Robinson Crusoe,"
"The Swiss Family Robinson," "Don Quixote," "Treasure Island," "The
Arabian Nights," "Gulliver's Travels," and classical legends. As he
grew older he passed on to "The Mabinogion," "The Pilgrim's Progress,"
Lamb's "Tales of Shakespeare," and writers like Henty, Manville Fenn,
Clark Russell, W. H. Fitchett and P. G. Wodehouse. He followed with
delight the adventures of Sherlock Holmes, whose charm never faded for
him. He made a point of reading everything written by Conan Doyle. But
he gave first place among living writers to George Bernard Shaw, and
next place to H. G. Wells. He would never miss a Shaw play. His
delight at the first performance he saw of _John Bull's Other Island_
was boisterous. He loved to read that play as well as to see it
performed. The glimpses of Ireland and the portraits of Irish
character enchanted him. Broadbent--typifying the self-complacency of
the well-meaning but Philistine Victorian who had solved to his own
satisfaction all mysteries in earth and heaven--he regarde