The fact that you are members of the Reading Club indicates that you are seeking knowledge. I trust that you are finding it,--that every stroke of the intellectual pick turns up a golden nugget; but do not make the mistake of supposing that all the wisdom of the world is bound in calf. You may know all that was ever penned in papyrus or graved on stone, written on tablets of clay or preserved in print and still be ignorant--not even know how to manage a husband. As a rule people read without proper discrimination, and those who are most careful often go furthest astray. I once knew a woman with no more music in her soul than a rat-tail file, who spent three laborious years learning to play the piano, then closed the instrument and never touched it again. One day I said to her: "Mary, what good did all the patient practice do you?" "Lot's o' good," she replied; "I used to be dreadfully ashamed to have people know that I COULDN'T play." And a great deal of laborious reading is undertaken on the same principle that Mary learned to play the piano--and is of just as little benefit. Many people are with books as with medicine--imagine that whatever is hardest to get down will do them the most good. No mortal man--and, as the preacher correctly stated, the men embrace the women-- ever yet got any permanent good out of a book unless he enjoyed its perusal. Jno. J. Ingalls says that everybody praises Milton's Paradise Lost, but nobody reads it. Ingalls is mistaken. Everybody making any pretension to culture has read the book--as a disagreeable duty; but that man don't live--at least outside of the lunatic asylum --who can quote a dozen lines of it. Same with Dante's Divine Comedia and a host of other books with which people are expected to inflict their brains. Read few books and those of the very best,--books that you enjoy. Read them thoroughly; make them your very own--then forget them as soon as possible. Having submitted to the mental or moral discipline of another, decline to lean on him, but stand up in your own independent individuality. Don't be a copy. There is on earth no more pitiable person than "The bookful blockhead, ignorantly read, With loads of learned lumber in his head." Do not interpret too literally. What I warn you against is the habit, all too common, of imagining ourselves rich because we have counted the golden hoard of others. One may admire the Medicean Venus without becoming a sculptor, or have Plato at his fingers' ends and ever remain a fool. Were I an artist I would study with attention the works of all the great masters; but when I put my hand to my own task I would turn my back upon them all and my face to nature. My work would then be a "creation," not a copy. Did I aspire to be truly learned I would study the words of the world's wisest--then dig for wisdom on my own behoof, I would thus become a philosopher instead of a parrot. . . .