Page:The High School Boy and His Problems (1920).pdf/125

 than the perusal once a week of a stock journal. These are not very progressive men, however. The newspapers and the technical journals are for information largely. You should read something regularly for inspiration, for kindling your imagination, and for developing your ideals. Read poetry. The better magazines are full of pleasant and inspiring verse, and there is always, to fall back upon, the good old standbys which you have studied and are studying in high school. You will never be sorry if you form the habit early of committing to memory such lines or stanzas or whole poems as especially please you. All through your life these lines will come back to you to be a source of pleasure and a stimulation to happy memories. Middle life and old age seem to you now very remote possibilities, but they will be on you, especially if you lead a busy life, almost before you know it. You will always be glad if while your mind is plastic and easily impressed, you let it dwell upon things that are pleasing and beautiful, and if at will you can recall passages from the best things that have been written.

Nearly everyone reads fiction of some sort, of course—adventure, romance, mystery, character study, philosophy—there are many things treated in the modern novel or short story, and every day, almost, there seems to be a new magazine springing up filled with fiction and feature stories and attracting the eye with its bizarre and particolored cover. Most of these are rather trashy,—a good deal of the fiction of today is hardly worth the time