WISE READING

Southland Times, Issue 25310, 13 June 1935, Page 5

WISE READING

BOOKS DISCUSSED ADDRESS BY MR T. D. PEARCE The subject “Books and what to read” is such a wide one that few lecturers can hope to cover it in a single address. Yet Mr T. D. Pearce succeeded in giving to the girls attending the Educational Week a broad outline of literature that was as helpful as it was informative.,. Drawing from his own wide store of knowledge on the subject, he held his audience interested for over an hour yesterday afternoon. “Why do we read books?” Mr Pearce asked. “For knowledge; for diversion; for amusement; for company; for suggestive lines of thought. We want a change of occupation from the physical to the intellectual. We seek and find it in books; serious or light. We are dull; we go to our humorists to get a laugh. We feel our imagination is being starved; we get a novel or a book of travel. In this way we are lifted from our present surroundings; on the wings of fancy we go to other fields. The Company of Books. “We read books for company if we are lonely. To lighthousekepers and plantation men books are the great dispellers of loneliness. There we have choice company, the best company, of all ages and of all times, ancient or modem; our solitude is broken. It is true the talk is all on one side. But we can pause and muse and weigh what we would say to the author if he were present. . . “There is no loneliness in a library; It is peopled by communicative souls, to suit your caprice of the moment. You want to know the latest phases in the marvellous advance of science. You ask Professor Jeans to entertain you; and right well he does it, whisking you away to the starry heavens with their fixed and movable stars, with their nebulae and comets and the interrelation of the planets. You want to visit the bottom of the sea. Dr. Beebe will take you there and show you the queerest of creatures. With a library you cannot be dull or lonely. “There is an bld saying that ‘Knowledge is Power,’ ” went on Mr Pearce. “Is it true? Of course it is. Let us examine this saying. Knowledge is gained by experience, either in our own life or from the experiences of others. Our life is limited; we cannot master everything, we have not the time. So we profit from the experience of others, stored up and recorded in books. Take the farmer. He has his own knowledge, gained by his own experiences. But they are limited, so the wise farmer profits by his reading of others’ experiences. He can get handbooks dealing with the diseases of dogs, sheep, cattle, horses; the poultry yard, the beehive, the kitchen garden, the orchard, the nursery and so on. Knowledge is power, enabling him to do things of which he has had no experience.” Hie Joy of Literature. Mr Pearce quoted a passage from “The Art of Reading” by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch (who held the chair of English Literature at Cambridge) and published in 1920, to show the joy of literature: “Men and women ought to find in literature, all their lives through, a retirement from mean occupations, a well of refreshment, sustainment in the daily drudgery of life, solace in calamity, an inmate by the hearth, ever sociable, never intrusive—to be sought and found, to be found and dropped at will, and left without any answering growl of moroseness; to be consulted again at will and found friendly.” Then he mentioned that Charles Lamb wrote of the plays of Shake r sneare:—“They are the enrichers of the fancy, strengtheners of virtue, a withdrawing from all selfish and mercenary thoughts and actions, to teach you courtesy, benignity, generosity, humanity.” To this Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch added: “They also raise your gorge to defend you from swallowing the fifthrate, the sham, the fraudulent.” Care of the Eyes. Mr Pearce stressed the need for taking adequate care of the eyes in order that they should not become strained. He said that the following rules for the care of the eyes ought to be followed and the exercises carried out daily:— (1) Use daylight as much as possible. (2) Never face the light, whether it is natural or artificial. _ (3) Have the light come from over the left shoulder. (4) Do not bend over what you are reading or writing, because that brings a rush of blood to the eyeballs with deleterious effects. (5) Exercise the muscles of your eyes by moving them regularly in their sockets in various directions. (6) Rinse your eyes out with cold water if they become tired. (7) If you study for a lengthy period, give your eyes five minutes’ spell—preferably in the open air. (8) If the eyes are tired, don’t continue reading. A short spell works wonders. The Memory. Dealing with the memory, Mr Pearce said: “Cultivate your memory. Commit to memory striking lines and sentences, beautiful passages. These will stick to you through life. “The memory changes with the oncoming of age. It ceases to be assimilative, and it becomes a pigeon-holing memory; a memory of where to find a passage or a thought. It does not retain the thought; it knows where to turn to recover it; it becomes a memory of references—a different memory from the memory of youth. You cannot always have your reference books by you; therefore learn by heart noteworthy passages. Approach to Reading. Quoting from Bacon as follows, “Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts, others to be read, but not curiously, and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention,” Mr Pearce said that reading might be divided into three classes. Encyclopedias, books of reference and dictionaries need be read only in parts, while newspapers, magazines and novels (which composed the second class), need not be read curiously; that was, they need not be studied with care, while judicious skipping might be practised. Books of study (the third class) should be read with diligence and attention. “These you ‘read, mark, learn and inwardly digest,’” said Mr Pearce. “You should compare your own thoughts with those of the author,” said Mr Pearce. “What is the author’s goal?, Does he reach it? Do you agree with him in his reasoning? Could he have set it out better? His treatment

of his characters should also be studied. “You should read the literature of your own country first, then, because of its inspiration from foreign sources, you should go to the sources of that inspiration. Your own country and your own Empire—do you know all about these?” Books to Read. Mr Pearce. mentioned the following as among New Zealand books they should read: Grey’s “Mythology of the Maori”; Judge Manning’s “A Pakeha Maori”; “Plume of the Arawas,” by Frank Acheson; Cowan’s books; Elsdon Best’s books; McNab’s “Murihiku”; Hocken’s “Contributions to the Early History of New Zealand”; “Maori Wars, 1861-1866”; various provincial histories of Otago, Canterbury, etc.; studies of the fauna and flora, the birds and animals, the flowers and trees. Among Australia’s literature he mentioned: The bushrangers, as portrayed in Rolf Boldrewood’s “Robbeiy Under Arms” (a classic); for the life away back they should read lon Idriess’s books from “Lassiter’s Last Ride” to “Flynn of the Inland.” “The latter book portrays vividly the Aerial Medical Service to the backblocks of Australia,” he said. "Read ‘Sandhill Country,’ by a squatter’s wife, depicting 30 years’ struggle with sand, spinifex and droughts in South West Queensland. ‘Cobbers’ is a book of travel written by an English examiner in music, recording what he saw as he went about Australia for two years; read studies of plant life, of bird life, and then, similarly, other parts of the Empire, Canada, Africa, India.”

(To be continued.)