STUDYING BOOKS
WITH deep and ancient tomes to toil, and burn the midnight Standard oil may seem a job forbidding; but it’s the proper thing to do, whene’er you have the time, if you would have a mind non-skidding. If one in social spheres would shine, he ought to cut out pool and wine, and give some time to study; load up with wisdom to the guards and read the message of the bards from Homer down to Ruddy. How often conversation flags, how oft the weary evening drags, when people get together, when they have sprung their ancient yawps about the outlook of the crops, the groundhog and the weather. How blest the gent who entertains, who’s loaded up his active brains with lore that’s worth repeating, the man of knowledge, who can talk of other things than wheat and stock and politics and eating! Our lives are lustreless and gray because we sweat around all day and think of naught but lucre; and when we’re at our inglenooks we never open helpful books, but fool with bridge or euchre. Exhausted by the beastly grind we do not try to store the mind with matters worth the knowing; our lives are spent in hunting cash, and when we die we make no splash, and none regrets our going.
