her point of view also. 'Every book that we take up without
a purpose is an opportunity lost of taking up a book with a purpose.'[22]
And this does not mean that we should always be reading 'improving'
books, that we must never read for recreation alone; for, I repeat,
'there is a time to every purpose under heaven.' But it does insist most
emphatically that there should be a rhyme and a reason for reading any
book at any time. There is a time for work and a time for play in reading
no less than in the daily cycle of our lives. As to what shall constitute
recreative reading, that is a matter which every man must decide for
himself. I will venture to prophesy, however, that, by judicious
selection and thoughtful reading, there will come a time when he will
consider the reading of the great books to constitute the finest mental
recreation in the world.

To return, however, to the great writers, those giants of whom we have
said that it behoves us all to know something at least. Must we read them
all? Let us leave 'must' out of the question; for our lifetime, however
long it may be, will be scarcely sufficient to know and appreciate to the
full these great masters of human thought. Yet at least it can be our aim
ever to feed our minds only upon food of the finest quality and of a
permanent nutritive value. But alas! How terribly limited are our
capacities both as regards time and opportunity! How narrow the bounds
which confine our reading abilities! Though a list of the great writers
contain all the constituents of an Epicurean feast, yet to most of us it
resembles the menu of a Gargantuan banquet.

As to the classics of the old world, surely, it may be urged, in such an
essentially practical age we can afford to neglect books so hopelessly
out of date? Yet there can be no greater mistake than to imagine that the
wisdom of the old world can ever be out of date, for it is the wisdom
that has created the civilisation of the newer world. Countless
generations of men may pass away and be utterly forgotten, but the
principles of morality inherent in man's nature will endure for ever. And
it is these great principles of all that is good and noble in our nature
that is brought out and developed insensibly by the study of the classics
in our youth. Moreover they are books that have been accepted by all the
nations of Europe as containing the bases of human thought. Something at
least we should all know of these great writers comm