There are books that you read for entertainment or recreation, and that are written for that purpose only. You may read such; indeed, you ought to read them, for you need, as everybody else needs, recreation and amusement, and there is much of the purest and best of this that you can get from books. But you must not make the mistake of supposing that most, or even a very large proportion, of your reading can be of this character. You would not think of making your daily meals of the articles of food that you enjoy as the sweets of your meals. You would not think of living on sponge-cake and ice-cream for a regular diet. You might as well do so, as to read only the light and humorous matter that was never intended for the mental diet of a working man. No. If you would attain the real object of reading and study, you must read and study books and papers that tax the full powers of your mind to understand them. This will soon strengthen the quality of your mind, even as the exercise of your muscles in work or play will develop a strength of body that the idle or lazy youth knows nothing of. If you would know how to make yourself master of any book that you read, form the habit, if the book is your own, of making notes with a pencil in the margin of the pages; but if the book is not your property, or in any case, take a sheet of paper and write at the end of every chapter questions on the matter discussed, and the answer to such questions will probably bring out the author’s meaning so fully that you will have _absorbed_ the book and made it your own; for, as an eminent American author has said, “thought is the property of whoever can entertain it.” I said just now that the daily newspaper does not pretend to supply all that you need to fit you for a life of business, either as a dealer in goods, or as a mechanic or clerk. But the daily paper is a most important means of education――so important that no one can afford to ignore it. Now-a-days one cannot be well informed who does not read the newspaper. The whole world is brought before us every morning and evening, and, if we do not read the news as it comes, we shall not know what we ought to know. It is not necessary to read everything in a daily paper; there are some things that it will be better for you not to read. You need not read all the editorials, brilliant as some of them are, for sometimes they discuss subjects that are not at all interesting nor useful to you. The newspaper from which I make the most clippings is one which is the fullest of advertisements, but which sometimes has nothing whatever in it that I read. But when it does discuss a subject of interest, it is apt to leave nothing further to be said.