Before attempting to aid any one to answer this question for himself, let me briefly advert to the fact that there are two kinds of reading for each of us, and two corresponding uses, therefore, of the library--the reading for amusement and the reading for profit. In regard to the former, I can say but a word, as it is a subject by itself. And that word is, let this reading be the best possible, and do not let it occupy too much of your spare time. Books read simply for amusement have on most a greater power to elevate or degrade than any others, and more care should be taken in selecting them than in the choice of those to be read for instruction. Read then, and put into the hands of the young the best fiction, and shun those writers, whatever their power or their popularity, who reproduce in their books the slang and vulgar speech of the streets and paint realistic scenes of vice and crime. The answer to the question, How or what shall I read? must necessarily be as varied as the tastes, the talents, and the circumstances of readers vary. The general aim, however, should be the same in all. We should read in order to do well whatever we have to do in life. Now this implies something more than the reading simply to increase one's knowledge--certainly a worthy aim, but not the highest. The field of knowledge is so broad and the time for reading so short that we must necessarily choose those subjects, the knowledge of which will make us better fitted for our work in life. And the mere seeking for knowledge, which is the sole end of much reading, does not imply, but may even prevent the attaining that higher end, the cultivation of our nobler powers, as the imagination and the sympathies, and the gaining the power of appreciating what is highest and best in literature and life. For instance, one may be conscious of a total lack of a love for any great writer. To him Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, and their peers are but names. Now it may be that the best use to which such an one can put a library is to make at least the attempt to understand and enjoy some great author. It will be no easy task, but one needing and worthy the hardest study. To take, as an illustration of one method, a lesser poet, read carefully and thoughtfully Matthew Arnold's introduction to his edition of the selected poems of Wordsworth. Whenever he refers to a poem, read it before going farther and re-read it until the thought of the poet as indicated by the commentator is reasonably clear. Then read in the same manner what Coleridge, Shairp, F.W. Robertson, or any other good critic has written upon Wordsworth. And, above all, sometimes read the poems as nearly as possible in the same circumstances under which they were written--in the forest, by the brook-side, in the solitudes of the mountains, or on a bridge in the heart of a great city. If this fail to awaken an interest in Wordsworth, try some other author in a similar