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Show portunitles. And It Is trao that but for his own hunger for books he woum have remained a rail Bpllttcr or handy man of all work, even as his father was. But given the ambition and power of application is It a draw-back draw-back to have one's early horizon bounded by the covers of a half dozen great works? W need to ask our-.oivaa our-.oivaa thto ntipfttion when we- see the avalanche of books. around us. How well do they shape the lives of our young people! How much do they comfort our age? "Literature is the thought of thinking think-ing souls," and its value to us is In the J amount of it we can digest, assimllato and make our own. How many people i nowadays go over the name book twice or thrice or a dozen times? And yet a book that Ib worth reading at all la worth reading until it Is all ours, until un-til its thought rims smoothly In our veins, and its speech becomes our own. We can keep silent and meditate medi-tate upon it. Carlyle tells us that "Speech Is of time; silence Is of eternity.' eter-nity.' We get little or eternity with the everlasting rattle of the pulp mil and printing press. If the wise man could say centuries ago, "Of making many books there Is no end, and much study, is a woarlness of the flush," what sall wo say now? A NEW VIEW OF OPPORTUNITY. There wero many Lincoln eulogies pronounced on Feb. 12, but nono afford af-ford more food for thought than that of Samuel J. Elder, a prominent lawyer, law-yer, who addressed a great assemblage assem-blage at the First Church of Chrl3t. Scientist, in Boston. ' In going back to the tinio of Lincoln's Lin-coln's birth, Mr. Elder spoke of the conditions then existing yid of tbe need of great characters, and referring refer-ring to the cloud obscuring the vision of men, he said: "Human slavery was in the land aud tho conscience of the people was dead to Its enormity. Tho strain and stress of mere existence fettered the thought of men and left no space" That strain and stress of mere existence ex-istence continues to fetter tho minds of men and shut out the more beautiful beau-tiful things of life. "Men," ho said, "come into the world as they are needed," and so Lincoln Lin-coln and Gladstone, and Tcnuyson and Poe, and Darwin and Holmes were born 100 years ago to meet a mission of great purpose. Mr, Elder offers an excellent thought In commenting on Lincoln's United pportunltles of schooling and books. Ho points out that each ono or thousands thous-ands read hundreds of books thosa lays and countless reams of magazines maga-zines and otber literature without receiving re-ceiving therefrom an impress on lite jt habit of thought. Perhaps not ono of those readers has drawn from his readings anything serving to establish estab-lish style of -speech or wrjtmg, and memory Is not stored with tbe bright gleaming nuggets which be has chip.' ped from tho mines of real literature.: lie notes that Lincoln had few Voles, but ho had the free life of the open riky and fields and woods. Tho book3 he read were made a part or him. Tho Bible. "Pilgrim Progress," "Aesop's "Ae-sop's Fables," "Robinson Cruso." and Weem's "Life of Washington," made up hla library. On this phaso ot Lincoln's Lin-coln's life, Mr. Elder says: We are wont to think of Lincoln, as laboring at profound disadvantage from the meageruess of his early op- |