To this spiritual comfort will be added gain in culture through close and regular reading of the Bible. Happy are they who commit to the wax tablets of childish memory the great passages of the Old Testament. Such was Ruskin, who owed much of his splendid diction to early study of the Bible. Such also were Defoe and De Quincey, two men of widely different gifts, but with rare power of moving men's souls. The great passages of the Bible have entered into the common speech of the plain people of all lands; they have become part and parcel of our daily life. So should we go to the fountainhead of this unfailing source of inspiration and comfort and drink daily of its healing waters, which cleanse the heart and make it as the heart of a little child. SHAKESPEARE STANDS NEXT TO THE BIBLE HINTS ON THE READING OF SHAKESPEARE'S PLAYS--HOW TO MASTER THE BEST OF THESE DRAMAS, THE FINEST OF MODERN WORK. Next to the Bible in the list of great books of the world stands Shakespeare. No other work, ancient or modern, can challenge this; but, like the Bible, the great plays of Shakespeare are little read. Many of today prefer to read criticism about the dramatist rather than to get their ideas at first hand from his best works. Others spend much time on such nonsense as the Baconian theory--hours which they might devote to a close and loving study of the greatest plays the world has ever seen. Such a study would make the theory that the author of the _Essays_ and the _Novum Organum_ wrote _Hamlet_ or _Othello_ seem like midsummer madness. As well ask one to believe that Herbert Spencer wrote _Pippa Passes_ or _The Idyls of the King_. [Illustration: A PAGE FROM THE COVERDALE BIBLE BEING THE FIRST COMPLETE ENGLISH BIBLE IT WAS TYNDALE'S TRANSLATION REVISED BY COVERDALE IT BEARS DATE OF 1535, AND DESIGNS ON THE TITLE PAGE ARE ATTRIBUTED TO HOLBEIN] The peculiarity of Shakespeare's genius was that it reached far beyond his time; it makes him modern today, when the best work of his contemporaries, like Ben Jonson, Marlowe and Ford, are unreadable. Any theatrical manager of our time who should have the hardihood to put on the stage Jonson's _The Silent Woman_ or Marlowe's _Tamburlaine_ would court disaster. Yet any good actor can win success with Shakespeare's plays, although he may not coin as much money as he would from a screaming farce or a homespun play of American country life.