Reading--and Character and Wisdom

Seldom in life do we find ourselves living or working under ideal conditions. There are delays and distractions. There are times of waiting — waiting for people, for appointments — waiting for many reasons, both in public and private places. There are times at home and times away, in military service, for example, or on some other assignment — when, after the routine duties of the day, there could be idle hours. And for such times reading is one of the richly rewarding ways of relieving the boredom, and of filling in the in-between times — not reading merely as a passer of time, but reading with discrimination, reading something significant. “Few of the books read among us deserve to be read,”¹ said William Ellery Channing. And Francis Bacon added: “Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested;…”² And now here are some searching and significant sentences written more than a century ago by Lord Macaulay, with a message of real moment for young men: “There is, I will venture to say, no judicious commanding officer of a regiment who will not tell you that the vicinity of a valuable library will improve… the whole character of the [men]. I well knew one eminent military servant of the East India Company, a man of great and various accomplishments, …a man who enjoyed the confidence of some of the greatest generals and statesmen of our time. When I asked him how, having left his country while still a boy, and having passed his youth at military stations in India, he had been able to educate himself, his answer was, that he had been stationed in the neighborhood of an excellent library, that he had been allowed free access to the books, and that they had, at the most critical time of his life, decided his character, and saved him from being a mere smoking, card-playing, punch-drinking lounger.”³ Again we would say, this array of eminent witnesses cannot well be ignored. What is there to do now? More than ever was — and good reading is one of the most rewarding pursuits for those who would wish for wisdom, and for those who would wish to fill the in-between times that would otherwise be wasted.