entration for
hours on one particular theme. No effort is required, and, more important
still, _it does not make one think_.

For daily reading in the train or over meals, with this purpose always in
view, so far so good. But what of the many hours of leisure in every
man's life, when no mental recreation is needed? What does the average
man read then? It must be confessed that in nine cases out of ten his
literature remains precisely the same. Doubtless the reason is simply
because, having always been accustomed to reading the same kind of books,
he knows no other sort. Mention Shakespeare, Milton, Shelley, and he
stares at you aghast. 'Good gracious,' he exclaims, 'I'm not going to
read stuff like that; I should get the hump for a week; give me something
cheerful.' And he picks up 'The Bauble,' by Mrs. Risquet Trashe.

And he is quite right. To anyone whose literature has consisted for years
of nothing but novels of the circulating library type, a sudden
application to the great writers would indeed be depressing. Is it
necessary, however, or indeed wise, that any man's mental pabulum should
consist entirely of novels? Nothing is further from my mind than to decry
the taste for novel-reading; for, wisely employed, novels can become one
of the joys of life. One can but agree with Miss Austen when she
inveighs, in 'Northanger Abbey,' against those who belittle the
productions of the novelist. But would she have been so emphatic had she
lived to witness the printing-presses spouting forth that frothy flood
which effervesces round the more serious writings of to-day? Would that
every novel we take up had the delightful 'genius, wit, and taste' of
Jane Austen to recommend it. How few and far between are the really good
novels that we read!

There can be no finer recreation for a tired mind than a good novel.
There is, however, one habit of reading which has become almost a social
evil; and that is the habit of reading newspapers which many indulge in,
morning, noon, and night. It is difficult to imagine anything more
calculated to destroy consecutive and considered thought than the
enormous variety of inconsequential topics that assails one every time
one opens a newspaper. The mind becomes completely fuddled with the
heterogeneous patchwork of entirely useless information. The only method
I have discovered by which one can acquire the important news and yet
retain the serenity of one's mind is that of having such news o