You are "penned in town," but you love excursions to the country and
the observation of wild life--certainly a heart-enlarging diversion.
Why don't you walk out of your house door, in your slippers, to the
nearest gas lamp of a night with a butterfly net, and observe the
wild life of common and rare moths that is beating about it, and
co-ordinate the knowledge thus obtained and build a superstructure
on it, and at last get to know something about something?
You need not be devoted to the arts, not to literature, in order to
live fully.
The whole field of daily habit and scene is waiting to satisfy that
curiosity which means life, and the satisfaction of which means an
understanding heart.
I promised to deal with your case, O man who hates art and
literature, and I have dealt with it. I now come to the case of the
person, happily very common, who does "like reading."
XI
SERIOUS READING
Novels are excluded from "serious reading," so that the man who,
bent on self-improvement, has been deciding to devote ninety minutes
three times a week to a complete study of the works of Charles
Dickens will be well advised to alter his plans.
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