| Show H OO OO T FROM GIRLHOOD i i TO MOTHERHOOD t I H 4CC + oo + + PAPER NO 7 BY MARY LOWE DICKINSON Good Beading What to Sead How to Bead A good many girls at a good many times have asked me what they should read not recognizing the fact that what thev should read Is of less im cortance than the Question of how they should read Indeed when the method and habit of reading is once settled it helps to settle the other question Of what to read The mind will naturally choose first something that would be agreeable And before you should attempt to form a taste you should ascertain what tastes you have at present I you girls should be told that someone some-one would send you the very kind of reading that would give you the most pleasure how many do you think would ask for a book of history How many would want to read an essay How man would care for a book of travels How many If you answered honestly would confide to me that you do not care for any book at all because YOU have no habit of fixing the mind long enough on any one subject sub-ject to make It desirable to take up a book over and over again And how many more I wonder would say Give me a story a short story T do not care much what it Is If onlv I comes out well In the end and If a good many things happen along then the-n av Most of the girls who have asked me what they shall read are young A good many of them are also very busy For quite too many real life has begun early They are either much occupied with studies or engaged In some occupation occu-pation bv which they can earn money for their own needs or they are help ins uarents to nay the rent or have taken upon themselves the expense of sending younger brothers and sisters to school Out of 30 such girls I should probably find 40 who would tell me i they were quite frank that of all reading they liked a story best and I should answer Read then to begin be-gin with the thing that you like best This shows your taste as far as it has been cultivated Chpose your story but if vou really desire out of your reading to secure something better than mere recreation make your story itself a means of cultivation Consider before you begin how you will read it First of all make up your mind that you are going to read something everyday every-day with regularity Divide up the whole long day In your own mind You know how much must be work or study how much given to dress how much to family and friends how much to rest and sleen Now see what you have left for your own improvement One tan hardly believe that many oung persons are so cruelly situated as not to have at least 15 minutes in a day which they can call their own I we find that we can take the 15 minutes regularly let us go to the book as promptlyas to > our dinner Do not think of the reading as one of the bines that may b omitted Do not allow yourself to b3 easily diverted from it The thing we are after is a habit that shall become so fixed that nature will ever after make a demand too strong to be resisted Now one suggestion more For the time that you can read be it short or long give ever bit of yourself to the book or the story Never permit your self to read words with our mind Upon something else Do not insult our brain by offering It a jumble of a dozen things at once and force it to reject two put of every three ideas I presented to It I you take this course I your mind will lose the very things I you ought to keep and the things less Important will have made too strong an impression This habit of putting your whole mind upon the story YOU are reading will reveal to you that you have = capacity and desire for something some-thing different and better than your story book But if you dawdle through a or of no veil itwill take you much longer to discover for yourself tat stones for the mind are what the schoolboy raid hash was for the body good for 50 or CO meals but not good for steady diet Now these three points first to obey your natural taste In the selection of your first reading second to read regularly reg-ularly If only 15 minutes a day and third to concentrate your entire thought and attention upon what you read will surely bring an intelligent mind to want something beside stories and to crave variety in Its mental diet You will continue the stories as a part of your reading mingling it with other and better things and as your taste develops even your story reading will assume an altogether different character char-acter Before the story is finished you will find yourself asking question like the I following What was the secret oft the of-t charm Did i I like it because I rts II Je t i cause of its liveliness of Incident its rapid action and events Did I most enjoy its sentimental or its dramatic side Was I more interested In the good than in the evil characters Did descriptions of scenery or of dress or of the beauty of the human faces charni me most Did the picturesque side of the story appeal to my artistic side Answer these questions on paper and you will be surprised to find that almost before you know I you are classifying the story under such headI j logs as Dramatic Situations Incidents j and Events Character Studies i Word Pictures of Scenery etc Then sometime I some-time while your hands are busy with I work or while you are taking a walk I or making a journeYIn the street car I decide what are your favorite portions of the tale and why you have chosen these portions as your favorites This suggestion is not given that you may learn to designate with regard re-gard to the excellent points i In the story but It Is a 0 continuance of your I study of yourself that you may learn i what you really enjoy and what you naturally reject what tastes are already al-ready developed and In what particulars I I particu-lars your taste is deficient By and by you wish to be ready to choose such reading as will suit your individual taste and needs Therefore I is important I I im-portant that you know yourself and one very simple way Is to put a book i I aside for a week or longer and then try to recall all that you can of it What you remember will show you the sides of life and character that I i your own mind naturally seizes upon and retains I Another charming exercise Is to take the plot of your story transfer the Incidents I In-cidents to another country and differ j i ent surroundings and Imagine what i would have been the effect of this change upon the Incidents or the characters j I char-acters as you know them Another excellent exercise Is to take I the characters as you find them and transpose the conditions Make the good man the victim of the temptations I tempta-tions Reform the evil man and see what effect this would have upon the i tale Those who have never been In i the habit of exercising the Imagination i I vlll find this a delightful resource for I an idle hour and by the time it has I been done with a few stories the mind will not only have come to greater I enjoyment of reading but toy will find sources of enjoyment in itself TI11 you did not dream it possessed Another step In this same cultivation I js to make a standard for a good story In your own mind Decide what qual flies are needed and then which of several stories possess and which lack I I these qualities Try to ascertain the I secret of the dullness of one story and the brightness of another Among I other things you will find out that the power making a plot is a part of the 0 0 0 0 N < 2 true storytellers gift Of the stories I you have read make a list of those which excel In this particular power Make another list of those stories In j which the author tells you everything about his characters In a descriptive style andover against that put a list of those that make their characters mae reveal themselves by their action and their talk And at about this point I think you should be ready to take up some work that treats of the elements of fiction and to find out what some older and wiser people have found in stories and what are the things that the critics think we ought to find there I This will be the beginning of more serious reading which at first should 1 be taken very little at a time I |
