Authors are not for the library, they are for the street, the railroad train, the office, the open fields. Read them in the library, or even in bed, but live them in the city thoroughfares, or country roads or workaday places in which you make your life. No man can read the Journals of that mystic, nature lover, Henry David Thoreau, without having his next trip to the country one of greater pleasure. The colors and the sounds of the fields, the woodlands and the brooks will bring a new joy to his spirit. No man can read the novels of some great gobbler of life, such as eighteenth century Tobias Smollett, without finding the city life of our twentieth century more human, more satisfying, more exciting. No man can seriously read a religious poet such as Whitman or Wordsworth without becoming more deeply religious, more keenly conscious of the wonders of God and Man. And the Bible—surely no one can read the magic beauty and truth in the Prophecies of the Old Testament without feeling that he has met and talked with giants. These books bear directly on life—they make us think, love and experience in a way that we have never done before. The world becomes more thoroughly a magic place in which there are a thousand things to make life one glorious escapade, through which we may be thankful for the opportunity of living. As some people believe reading to be a pleasant method of passing the time (without realizing that time is in truth passing them), so others believe that being "well read" is some sort of a social advantage. It is difficult to determine which is the more stupid and superficial point of view, that of regarding books as time-killers or as useful topics of conversation. The latter is probably the worst, as, in addition to its superficial aspect, there is its insincerity. The man or woman who reads a great book because it is "the thing to do" is not only a weak follower of fashion but a waster of valuable time. It is far better never to have read a book than to have read it stupidly and begrudgingly with the thought in mind that it will be a feather in your cap to be able to boast of having read it. Needless as it may seem to make a point of this, it is, nevertheless, the idea in the mind of many a man in college, and many a woman who joins a reading circle. Some misguided supporters of the study of the ancient classics use as a plea that "every gentleman should read Greek." The insincerity of this defence can only be compared to the sighs of the woman who attempts to convince her neighbors that the beauty of a sunset appeals to her as it does to no one else, or the ecstatic murmurings of the young man at the art exhibition, who is arousing within himself a false enthusiasm, for some artistic cult that in truth means nothing to him.