Page:The High School Boy and His Problems (1920).pdf/122

 reading habit generally nor does it awaken generally an interest in good not to say the best, literature. I have suggested previously that I believe the explanation of this condition arises from the fact that we force the taste of young people and feed them at first on things they can not assimilate. We give them literary indigestion, and they revolt from reading.

There is scarcely a day of his life until he finishes high school that a boy might not devote at least a short time to reading from which he could derive both pleasure and profit. If you want to learn to read, select first the things that are most interesting to you—history, science, poetry, fiction, the news of the day, or whatever it may be. Read the best things that you can understand and enjoy. You will find that scientific facts as presented by Darwin and Huxley and John Burroughs are not only quite as dependable as those which commonplace writers give you, but they are so simply and so interestingly presented that they read like a story book; they will develop your scientific interest far more quickly than if you give your time to some other author who knows less and writes worse. If you enjoy history, then read Macaulay or John Fiske, or Motley or any one of a dozen men who will give you all the facts that a less brilliant author might present, and who will do it in a style that is at once delightful and inspiring. If you are drawn to the fiction of heroism and adventure you will not know what delight there is in romance at its best until you have tasted