to
cultivate a few friends whose intelligence we can respect and whose
taste is sympathetic and who read, and to get from them from time to
time the names of modern books which they have read and found good. I
have had too little time for reading, but that my advice may not be
entirely academic I will recommend you, at any rate, one good modern
novel. Its name is "The Bent Twig," the authoress is Dorothy Canfield,
and I can tell you nothing except that she is an American, but the book
seems to me one of the best pieces of work in novel writing that has
happened to come under my own observation recently. There are others, no
doubt, in plenty, and if you get half a dozen friends who are fond of
reading each to recommend you one book as I have done, you will have
provision for a little time to come.

To conclude my suggestions about reading I would urge this. Like all the
best things in life, the recreation of reading needs a little planning.
When we have a holiday in prospect we make plans beforehand so that when
the time comes we may know exactly where we want to go, what we want to
do, how the holiday is to be spent, and have all our preparations ready.
If we do not do that the holiday finds us unprepared and the greater
part of it is wasted. So with our spare time, our casual leisure. Do not
let it find us unprepared. It is a good plan to make a list of books
which either from our own thought, our own experience, or the
recommendation of friends, we feel a desire to read. We should have one
or two of these books always at hand, and have them in mind, too, as
something which we are longing to read at the first opportunity. I
think some people lose the habit and pleasure of reading because they do
not take this trouble and make no plan, and when the spare evening or
the long railway journey or the wet day comes it finds them without any
book in anticipation, and they pick up a newspaper or a magazine, not
because they specially want to read it, but because they have nothing
present to their minds or at hand which they really care for. The habit
of planning ahead is essential to real cultivation of the pleasure of
reading, just as essential as planning is for sport or travel or games
or any of the other pleasures of life. I know friends who are fond of
sport. They choose a long time beforehand the river they will fish or
the sort of shooting they will pursue. Another friend likes travel and
plans months in advance where