A Book-Lover's Holidays in the Open

e would read at home. Such an answer generally invites the further question as to what books I read when at home. To this question I am afraid my answer cannot be so instructive as it ought to be

an or a woman is fond of books he or she will naturally seek the books that the mind and soul demand. Suggestions of a possibly helpful character can be made by

placed among the classics. It is as discreditable to the mind to be unfit for sustained mental effort as it is to the body of a young man to be unfit for sustained physical effort. Let man or woman, young man or girl, read some good aut

s, pears, oranges, pineapples, and peaches. I dislike bananas, alligator-pears, and prunes. The first fact is certainly not to my credit, although it is to my advantage; and the second at least does not show moral turpitude. At times in the tropics

avy weather of most parts of the "Fortunes of Nigel," "Esmond," and the "Old Curiosity Shop"-to mention only books I have tried to read during the last month. I have no q

e as wonderful as the former-I wouldn't venture to admit my shortcomings regarding them if I couldn't proudly express my appreciation

e, and to brace himself with a course of Eugene Brieux or Henry Bordeaux. If he does not care for "Anna Karenina," "War and Peace," "Sebastopol," and "The Cossacks" he misses much; but if he cares for the "Kreutzer

bly be offset by any entertainment they yield. There remain enormous masses of books, of which no one man can read more than a limited number, and among which e

nd probably not more than half a dozen books would appear in all these lists. As for a "five-foot library," scores can readily be devised, each of which at some given

eferences as anything whatever but individual preferences; and this chapter is to be accepted as confessional rather than didactic. With this understanding I admit a liking for novels where something happens; and even among these novels I

ike Milton's, in dramas like those of ?schylus and Sophocles-I am entirely willing to accept and even demand tragedy, and also in some poetr

considered as books, and not as instruments of my profession-I do not care to study suffering unless for some sufficient purpose. It is only a very exceptional nove

vening is occupied I can at least get half an hour before going to bed. But all kinds of odd moments turn up during even a busy day, in which it is possible to enjoy a book; and then there are rainy afternoons in the

asonably heavy, in order that it may last. You can under these conditions read Herbert Spencer, for example, or the writings of Turgot, or a German study of the Mongols, or even a German edition of Aristophanes, with erudite e

tigations, or in hard-fought political campaigns-it is the greatest relief and unalloyed delight to take up some really good, some really enthralling book-Tacitus

nyielding courage and thrifty resourcefulness of the iron-tempered King; and with its screaming deification of able brutality in the name of morality, and its practise of the suppression and falsification of the truth under the pretense of preaching veracity-I turned to Macaulay's essay

d of quaint little old histories of Eugene of Savoy and Turenne. In similar fashion my study of and delight in Mahan sent me further afield, to read queer old volumes

modern writers on the same period, finishing with Oman's capital essay on "Seven Roman Statesmen." Gilbert Murray brought me back from Greek history to Greek literature, and thence by a natural sugg

r, can do for our last great wilderness, Alaska. From Sheldon I turned to Stewart Edward White, and then began to wander afar, with Herbert Ward's "Voice from the Congo," and Mary Kingsley's writings, and Hudson's "El Ombu," and Cunningham Grahame's sketche

has unconsciously followed a regular course of reading. Once I travelled steadily from Montaigne through Addison, Swift, Steele, Lamb, Irving, and Lowell

lley or Herrick or Tennyson; now Poe and Coleridge; and again Emerson or Browning or Whitman. Sometimes one wishes to read for the sake of contrast. To me Owen Wister is the writer I wish when I am hungry with the memories of lonely mountains, of vast sunny plains with seas of wind-rippled grass, of springing wild cre

foreign language, so that at least one other great literature, in addition to our own noble English literature, shall be open to him or her. Modern languages are taught so easily and readily that whoever really desires to learn one of the

hem at times-from Sydney Smith to John Ph?nix and Artemus Ward, and from these to Stephen Leacock. Mark Twain at his best stands a little apart, almost as much so as Joel Chandler

afely be assumed that Gibbon will not. The mood that is met by Napier's "Peninsular War," or Marbot's memoirs, will certainly not be met by Hawthorne or Jane Austen. Parkman's "Montcalm and Wolfe," Motley's histories

ly damns both the books themselves and the reviewer who is willing to notice them. I would much rather see the heading "books of the year before last." A book of the year before last which is still worth noticing would probably be worth reading; but one only entitled to be called a book of the week had better be tossed into the wastebasket at once. Still, there are plen

legislative body with which he deals, let him study Macaulay's account of the way William was treated by his parliaments as soon as the latter found that, thanks to his efforts, they were no longer in immedia

disheartening, a study of the first fifteen years of the nineteenth century will at any rate give us wh

faith," the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, for instance, were better than our own, let him read any trustworthy book on the subject-Lea's "History of the Inquisition," for inst

ad, or even all the kinds. The foregoing is a very imperfec