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spurs to your horse," was Wellington's reply, "or the business will be done by your cowardly companion before you get there." He was right. The business was done; the coward swept down upon the enemy like a whirlwind, and scattered them like chaff!

CHAPTER VII.

READING.

The Tedious Day. How to read. Now is the Time to begin. Nothing to build with. One Dish at a Time. Great Men raised up in Times of Commotion. One hundred and twenty-four Volumes. A Book read in Six Months. Books of Pewter and of Bank-notes. Starving on Jellies. Changing Horses at Paris. Convent in Portugal. Chain of Memory. Three Hours a Week. Let nothing interfere. Poetry its own Reward. None, safest. Giant cracking Nuts. Phosphorus and Honey.

DR FRANKLIN thinks that he must be a very wretched man who is shut up of a rainy day and knows not how to read. It seems to me that he must be more wretched who is thus shut up and does know how to read, but who has nothing to read. The world contains a vast amount of the mind and the thought that have lived before us; not all, to be sure,

nor is it all digested, sifted, reduced, and well arranged; but so much so, that the books now in the world are a vast repository, to which we may go and take what we wish. The mine is very rich and the ore extracted very precious; but you want to know how to dig it, how to separate and refine it. There probably is not a subject upon which the human mind has ever thought, which has not left the record of these thoughts on the printed page. As all think more or less, and as multitudes have not judgment or taste sufficient to know whether their thoughts are worth printing or not, there must be of course a huge mass printed, and thrown into the common stock, to be used or thrown aside as mankind may choose. As we have a great multitude of duties to perform, and a very limited period in which to do them, we want to know how to make the most of our time and opportunities. We want to know how we can read to the best advantage, obtain the most of instruction, thought, or amusement in a given time. This is what I wish you to be able to do.

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NOW IS THE TIME TO BEGIN.

There are but two kinds of books in the world, such as are designed to instruct, and such as are intended to amuse; and when a book blends amusement with instruction, it is not for the sake of the amusement, but for the sake of instruction, just as you mix sugar with your medicine, not for the sake of the sugar, but to make the medicine go down. It is our privilege, within certain bounds, to make books subserve both of these ends. There is no way in which one can be so easily and quickly instructed or amused as by the reading of books. Still we need to know how to read to advantage, what to read, and in what proportions we may read for improvement and what for entertain

ment.

Let me say, too, here, that if you ever acquire habits of reading, and if you ever have in the mind stores laid up which you have drawn from books, it must be done in the morning of life. I never knew a man acquire a love for reading who did not commence it early; and I never knew a full man, who had great resources from which he could

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draw with facility, who did not lay up faithfully in early life. There is no subject on which you may not obtain information from books, there is none on which you are limited as to amount. He, therefore, who does not know how to read to advantage is a great loser; and he who may know how, but will not read, is not merely a dunce, but very wicked. Bishop Horne remarks, "You should be careful to provide yourself with all necessary knowledge, lest, by and by, when you should be building, you should have your materials to look for and bring together; besides that, the habit of studying and thinking, if it be not got in the first part of life, rarely comes afterwards."

My first caution is, Do not try to read too many books. Some seem to have the notion

that if they only read, read something, and

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a great deal, they are on the high way to improvement. You might just as well say, that if you only eat a great deal, keep at it, no matter what you eat, flesh or fish, pies or pork, tomatoes or tom-tits, potatoes or puddings, sausages or sorrel, green apples or green