Show STUDENT LIFE 42 College to be regretted Here we have opportunities which perhaps Most may never be ours again of us have come from farms or small towns where it is almost impossible to obtain any but the very We have accommonest books cess here to a magnificent library and yet we do not appreciate it as we should In registering at the beginning of each year we think of the sacrifices which our parents have made in order that we may come to school and so we take a great deal of work thus leaving little time for recreation And yet if we could only realize it it is not so much the prescribed textbook work which benefits us and which our parents and friends will see the results of in our contact with them but rather a general improvement the result partly of association with educated persons The reading of good books will give us much of this culture for Matthew Arnold’s definition of culture as the best that has been thought and said in all the world ujon every subject coincides with the established definition of the best literature Xonc of us would care to be called uncultured yet to the extent that we do not know the best words aiid the best thought in any subject this must be said of us Hooks elevate broaden and deepen the mind We are introduced into the society of the best and wisest of all the ages Should we be content to devote our time to the pleasures of ordinary intercourse —as one writer has ex pressed it—“the inane chatter of the sewing circle the vulgar gossip of the corner store the never-endin- g frivolities of the dance hall?” lie says that we should make it as easy to talk sense as nonsense that it ought to be as pleasant to spend one’s leisure with books as with bicycles and as agreeable to exercise the brains for pleasure as the heels and toes Discussions of fashions and flirtations should not occupy our time when at will we may summon the majestic Homer or Milton the eloquent Demosthenes or Webster the wise Solomon or lkicon or may listen to the poetry of Shakespeare Chaucer or Ryron Ruskin asks: “Will you go and gossip with your house-mai- d or your stableboy when you may talk with queens and kings the chosen and the mighty of every place and time ?” A good hook has been defined as one which is opened with expectation and closed with profit Carlyle says “If time is precious no book that will not improve bv repeated readings deserves to be read at all” From reading of good books our imagination should be so trained that we mav see in the common thi ngs of life something high and noble We all pity Wordsworth’s Hell Peter because “A primrose by the river brim A yellow primrose was to him And it was nothing more” Pew things in life are really ideal yet we may make them more |