Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 83.djvu/145

Rh read all that they need of it in some public library, without money and without price. The public libraries in the principal cities offer the most ample and inviting opportunities for reading, and these opportunities are growing richer every year. Public libraries are enlarging and new ones opening. In nearly every state, a Library Commission is planting libraries in small places and carrying traveling libraries to the remotest hamlets. Quite as important, librarians are mastering their trade, becoming more and more able to make libraries available to such as use them.

The opportunities for securing information and culture through reading, which are now presented by low-priced editions, good translations and free libraries, constitute, together, a potent appeal to ua to read.

Another such appeal lies in the certainty that by properly using these privileges any one of us can become a well-informed, well-educated person. "Reading makes the full man," says Francis Bacon.

Says Lecky ("Map of Life, Conduct and Character"):

Mere reading by itself alone can of course never produce the ideal education. Reading can not wholly take the place of schooling. The seminary, student conferences and debates, the class, class drill, oral explanations from arousing and able instructors, the inspiration which each student derives from the student body about him, and the other thousand and one stimulating associations connected with every good school, exert an influence which books and reading are powerless to produce. One who has never been subject to these influences, be he the most omnivorous and painstaking reader in the world, is unfortunate. Get all the schooling you can. If possible couple it with your reading. Irregular schooling is better than none, and so is a poor teacher. None of us are too old or too learned to be benefited by a term or a course of lessons or lectures in school, college or university. However, if you have never been able to avail yourself of these excellent aids in the training of mind, and if you are now and henceforth unable to do so, do not despair. You can read, and your chances are enviable.