“That’s true,” Darling admitted. “Still, I think there are better things in store for you than signing newspaper articles, if you manage right and prepare yourself for them. Your style is very good indeed--for a newspaper writer; bright, I mean, and interesting and taking. But it lacks finish, Dick, and finish you can give it only by reading, which you have no time for as things go now. You should read Macaulay carefully, both the history and the essays, if only for the sake of the beautiful diction. And Scott and Thackeray you must read by all means. Of course you have read them, but I mean read them as a study, not merely for the sake of the story. Read them and study their methods of construction, their ways of carrying the reader gracefully from one point to another without sacrificing the interest, and of course their wonderful delineation of character. “The construction of a novel was a natural gift to Scott and Thackeray, you will say; but it was not to them any more than it is to others. Their construction is art, not nature; but it is such high art that the art is concealed and seems to be nature. Then you must read Shakespeare, as a matter of course; it will stir you up when you feel sluggish. And Burns, Byron, Tennyson, and our best American poets. And above all things study the Bible. You read it for devotional reasons, I suppose, but I mean study it carefully as a literary work. Some of the books of the Bible contain the grandest examples of elegant, concise diction in the language. The knowledge always on tap in works of reference I suppose you have become familiar with in the office.” “Oh, haven’t I!” Dick exclaimed. “I don’t see why they didn’t teach me about those things in school, but I never knew much about the standard works of reference till I went into the Transport office. The cyclopædias tell me something about almost any subject; if I want to know about any place in the world the Gazetteer tells me. I want to know the date of any important thing that has happened and there is Haydn’s Dictionary of Dates, or I want to quote a line from some good writer and I take down Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations. Dodd’s Beauties of Shakespeare is almost equal to a knowledge of the plays and poems, and if I want to find any particular passage in Scripture the Concordance points it out to me in a moment. It’s a good education in itself to know where to find these things. Then the biographies tell me about all the prominent people of the past or present.”