A friend once asked me what he could read to improve his mind. In the pride of a little superior wisdom, I loftily recommended Shakespeare. His reply was, “That is too deep for me.” A wiser counselor than I, knowing his circumstances, would not have tried to cultivate a sprouting ambition with quite so perfect an intellectual instrument. But I stuck to my advice, and shortly after I had opportunity to prove that I was, if not wise, at least on the side of wisdom. We went together to see “Othello”--from gallery seats. After that my friend read the play and another that was bound with it. Shakespeare is deep, forsooth. Hamlet’s soliloquy in the fourth act: How all occasions do inform against me, is so profound that it is darkened by its very depth. But the play “Hamlet” is a stirring melodrama that keeps the “gallery gods” leaning forward in their seats. The larger part of literature is by dead authors, because the “great majority” of the race is dead and includes its proportionate number of poets and prophets. Some great books _are_ dull except to a comparatively few minds in certain moods. But most dull books by old writers have been forgotten; our ancestors saved us the trouble of rejecting them. Most books that have survived are triumphantly alive in all senses. The vitality of a book that is just born may be brief as a candle flame. The old book that is still bright has proved that its brightness is the true luster of the metal; else we should not know its name. CHAPTER II THE PURPOSE OF READING The question why we read books is one of those vast questions that need no answer. As well ask, Why ought we to be good? or, Why do we believe in a God? The whole universe of wisdom answers. To attempt an answer in a chapter of a book would be like turning a spyglass for a moment toward the stars. We take the great simple things for granted, like the air we breathe. In a country that holds popular education to be the foundation of all its liberties and fortunes, we do not find many people who need to be argued into the belief that the reading of books is good for us; even people who do not read much acknowledge vaguely that they ought to read more. There are, to be sure, men of rough worldly wisdom, even endowed with spiritual insight, who distrust “book learning” and fall back on the obvious truth that experience of life is the great teacher. Such persons are in a measure justified in their conviction by the number of unwise human beings who have read much but to no purpose. The bookful blockhead, ignorantly read, With loads of learned lumber in his head