roped in amazement up and
down the great rows of books. Presently a strange sense of
inadequateness came over him. "I can never read all of those books,
nor half of them," he said. "I suppose one must read them in order to
be well informed."

Mr. Duncan appeared to change the subject.

"You like fruit?" he asked.

"Yes, of course. Why--"

"When you go into a fruit store do you stand and say, 'I can never eat
all of that fruit; crates and crates of it, and carloads more in the
warehouse?' Of course you don't. You eat enough for the good of your
system, and let it go at that. Now, just apply the same sense to your
reading. Read enough to keep your mind fresh, and alert, and vigorous;
give it one new thought to wrestle with every day, and let the rest
go. . . Oh, I know that there is a certain school which holds that
unless you have read this author or that author, or this book or that
book, you are hopelessly uninformed or behind the times. That's
literary snobbery. Let them talk. A mind that consumes more than it
can assimilate is morally on a par with a stomach that swallows more
than it can digest. Gluttons, both of them. Read as much as you can
think about, and no more. The trouble with many of our people is that
they do not read to think, but to save themselves the trouble of
thinking. The mind, left to itself, insists upon activity. So they
chloroform it."

Mr. Duncan also took occasion to speak with Dave about his religious
views. He did not forget Dave's explanation of why he went out of the
church. "I sympathize with your point of view a great deal," he said,
"but don't be too sweeping in your conclusions. The church is too
fussy over details; too anxious to fit the mind of man--which is his
link with the Infinite--into some narrow, soul-crushing creed; too
insistent upon the form of belief and not nearly insistent enough upon
conduct. It makes me think of a man who was trying to sell me an
automobile the other day. He was explaining all about the trimmings;
the cushions and the lights and the horn and all that sort of stuff,
and when he was through I said, 'Now tell me something about the motor.
I want to know about the thing that makes the wheels go round. If it's
no good I guess the trimmings are only fit for junk.' Well, that's the
way with the church. The motor that has kept it running for nineteen
centuries is the doctrine of love; love of man to man, love of man to
God, love