c assemblages. The Bible "gets to the
point."

And it has something for everybody. If you are a politician, or even a
statesman, no matter how astute you are, you can read with profit
several times a year the career of David, one of the cleverest
politicians and greatest statesmen who ever lived. If you are a
business man, the proverbs of Solomon will tone you up like
mountain-air.

A young woman should read Ruth. A man of practical life, a great man,
but purely a man of the world, once said to me: "If I could enact one
statute for all the young women of America, it would be that each of
them should read the book of Ruth once a month." But the limits and
purpose of this paper do not permit a dissertation on the Bible.

Shakespeare, of course, you cannot get along without. I shall say no
more about him here; for if anything at all is said about Shakespeare
(or the Bible), it ought to take up an entire paper at least. "Don't
read anybody's commentaries on Shakespeare--don't read mine; read
_Shakespeare_," was the final advice of Richard Grant White, one of
the ripest of the world's commentators on this universal poet.

From the Bible and Shakespeare roads lead down among books but little
lower in elevation and outlook. Of these the essays of Emerson furnish
a noble example; and the poems of the Concord philosopher are the
wisdom of the ancients stated in terms of Americanism. I would have
every young man spend half an hour over each page of our American
Thinker's essays on Character, Manners, Power, and Self-reliance.

Indeed, wherever you turn, among the pages of our Sage, you find no
desert place, but always a very forest of thought, tumultuous and
vibrant with fancy and suggestion, sweet and wholesome with living
truth and all helpfulness. You can form no better habit than to read a
page or two of Emerson every night.

Take Emerson as an example; read books of that sort--books that are
kin to the Bible and Shakespeare. There is no excuse for your
poisoning your time with idle books or low books or transient
books--moth volumes that flutter an instant in the light and in an
instant die. For the great books are entertaining. If you want
excitement, Plutarch's Lives furnish you thrilling-narrative fiction
cannot surpass--and undying inspiration besides.

The great novels, too, have in them all the blood and battle-ax the
stoutest nerve can crave, all the incidents of love, self-sacrifice,
and gentle invention the