The second joy of reading is even greater. Not only the world of adventure is open to you by means of books, but also a life enriched by the wisdom that has been gathered from a thousand poets and historians as bees gather honey from a thousand flowers. There is a story of a great Italian of the sixteenth century who found himself in the prime of life without a position, without money, and even compelled to become an exile because of a revolution. He retired to a farm remote from all the scenes in which his previous life had been passed. All day he worked hard, for only by hard work could he live. But in the evenings, when work was done, when horses and oxen and the laborers who had toiled with them all the day had gone to sleep, this man put on the splendid court dress he had worn in the days of his prosperity, days when he had associated with princes and the great ones of the earth, and so garbed he went into his library and shut the door. And then, he tells us, for four hours he lived amid the scenes that his books called up before him. He found in books an Aladdin’s lamp that transported him to past times, that revealed the secrets of nature, that showed him what men had accomplished. Through history, he re-created the past. He could call on the wisest of men for counsel, and he forgot during these hours his weariness and pain. This story of the great Italian has been paralleled many times. There was once a boy in a frontier cabin who had no such experience as this man passed through centuries ago, but who was eager to know all that could be learned about life. His days were long and hard, but he was dreaming of things to come. At night by the light of the pine logs blazing in the fireplace, this boy read and studied. Books were hard to get; sometimes he tramped for miles to borrow one that he had heard a distant farmer possessed. Thus Lincoln found the second of the joys of reading, the stored-up wisdom of the race that he appropriated against the day when he was to be not merely a student of history but a maker of history as well. [Illustration: THE SONG OF THE LARK] The third joy of reading is that through books our eyes are opened to the beauty of the world in which we live. There is a famous painting called “The Song of the Lark.” A peasant girl is on her way to work in the fields, sickle in hand, in early morning. She has stopped to listen to the flood of melody that pours from the sky above her, and is trying in vain to see the bird which is singing the glorious song. Her dull, unexpressive face is lighted up for the moment in the presence of a beauty that she feels but does not comprehend. So the painter interprets for us the effect of beauty upon even a dull intelligence. But the poet translates the song into beautiful language, and we read and are happy.