er side of thirty, would
seem to read everything printed about five minutes after it has left
the press, and before anybody else has had a chance to see it. There
are so many capital letters on the pages of his own books that it makes
one dizzy to look at them. Whether or not he reads through all the
books he mentions is of course (as he is a reviewer) a question. And,
then, both Mr. Huneker and the Doctor belong to the trade, so to say.
Another startlingly prodigious reader is Theodore Roosevelt,
hilariously past thirty, and not exclusively identified with literary
"shop." He is continually discovering and vigorously recommending new
poets and short-story writers whom professional critics have not yet
had time to get around to. It does not appear that a fundamental or
organic change in the composition of the human brain which inhibits
reading occurs more or less suddenly at thirty.

Why then do so many reading animals cease at about that time to read?
Butler does not say. Arnold Bennett (was it not?) has asked what's the
use of his reading more, he knows enough. Hazlitt, in his own case,
surmised that the keener interest of writing rather asphyxiated the
impulse to read. And, doubtless, that generally is about the size of
it. As in the cure of the drink habit, a new and more intense interest
will drive out the old. The reader, of course, is a spectator, not an
active participant in the world's doings. After thirty, desirable
citizens of ordinary energy have little opportunity for the role of
noncombatant, and the taste of action and of success, like the taste of
war, makes them impatient with quieter things. Failures read more than
successful men. Bachelors no doubt read much more than husbands. And
fathers seldom are great readers. This last fact may explain the
observation that even college professors do not read fanatically. When
they are "off" awhile they "play with" their children (children are
great enemies everywhere to reading), who are much more real to them
than study.

In one of his later books George Moore chronicles his resolve to
cultivate the habit of reading, to learn to read again. And he sucks
much naive pleasure from the contemplation of this prospective
enterprise; but he finds it very difficult to persevere in it, and
drifts away instead into reveries of what he has read. There is a
thought here, however, to be hearkened to: the idea of learning to read
again.

What is it that