r joy that there was quite a lengthy and learned
disquisition on the subject. So they read it again and again, even
learning the more abstruse sentences by heart. Next day they were
observed to chuckle whenever they caught each other's eye, and at lunch
they were unusually cheerful and more than ordinarily attentive to the
unsuspecting Brown.

That night at dinner they could hardly restrain their impatience, and
Smith introduced the topic, rather clumsily, as soon as the fish
appeared. Brown stared at them and said nothing. Jones, plucking up
courage, presently asked him a question about the dominant fifth of the
scale used by the natives of Quang-Tung. He answered evasively. They
could hardly conceal their delight, and their voices rose so that
presently the whole table was looking at them. At some of their recondite
utterances Brown fairly winced, and it soon became evident to all what
was afoot. Upstairs in the common-room they pursued their unhappy victim.
The senior tutor and the dean, secretly enjoying the fun, stood near. At
last, flushed with victory, Jones proceeded to administer
the _coup de grace_.

'You really ought to read something about Chinese music, Brown, it's a
most interesting topic, and I'm sure you'd like to be able to talk about
it. There are quite a number of good books on the subject. For a start
you couldn't do better than study the article in the "Encyclopaedia
Academica." It's clear and concise, evidently written by a man who knows
what he's talking about.'

'I _have_ read it,' said Brown patiently; 'in fact I--er--_wrote_ it,
_but I'm afraid it's quite out of date now_.'

* * * * *

We are not all the lucky possessors of such a capacity for acquiring
knowledge. Wide reading may be good from an educational point of view,
but unless we are able to assimilate what we read better a thousand times
to restrict our reading. Gibbon's advice is bad, for it indicates merely
the system he employed in compiling his monumental work. 'We ought not,'
he remarks, 'to attend to the order of our books so much as (to the
order) of our thoughts.' So, in the midst of Homer he would skip to
Longinus; a passage in Longinus would send him to Pliny, and so on.
General reading upon this plan, with no idea of collection in view, would
in time reduce most of us to idiocy.

Let our reading be, above all things, well ordered and systematic. Let us
imitate Ancillon rather than Gibbon.