Kansas University Weekly.
299
known to you, but whose bearers give delight, with their sketches of ramble and peering, to many a lazy but appreciative lover of woodsy sights and smells and sounds.
So much of our student reading is that miserably unsatisfying, heart-breaking, and mostly prenicious "information reading." Read for pleasure, or study. To study is not necessarily to study the few courses you may have undertaken for the college year; but it means, or it does in this letter, to read long and deeply of the subject hit on. "General culture," "wide information," are not the result of cramming digests or compends of facts; and compends of information are what a surprisingly large part of our student days "library" is composed of. "Art and the Formation of Taste," (I quote from the back of a little duodecimo on my own shelves!) will form no taste in art. "How to Judge a Picture," another little by-path to "general culture," has not made me nor any one else a judge of pictures. "A History of French Literature," in thin octavo for 65 cents, may have a few dates of French authors birthdays, and of those of their probable parents, in convenient shape for reference, but there is little knowledge of French Literature to be squeezed out of its poor thin covers.
We probably have enough study on hand during our undergraduate years with caring for Political Economy I and German II. Let us read them for pleasure; for that high pleasure which comes in thrills of sympathy and exaltation, from a perception of the motives of great ideal hearts; thrills of love of nature, from a glimpse of her beautiful and mysterious laws and lives; thrills of excitement from the feverish following of a story of adventure or imagination; thrills of admiration for the force, or the rhythm, or the keen pertinence of the style of a master of language. Out of such reading comes something very much more worth while than the evidently shallow, obviously learned by rote, painfully parrot-like pipings of the ready made critical poser of the once-a-month club for the study of history, literature, economics, science and the fine arts. General information is not culture; rather culture is exact information, and the genuine critical perception of a thinking and feeling mind. Exact information comes from study; and an active, sensitive, perceptive mind from stimulating, genuinely loved reading.
If I have drifted from my invitation to out-of-doors books, to incoherent cries about books in general, it is because I know that few college students will read of rambles in woods and meadows as long as the never satisfied demands of duty hold them to the painful perusal of ready reckoners of the sciences and philosophies. If somebody in authority would but call a halt on the making of ready reckoners; but nobody will. Next best, perhaps, is the standing up in place of reformed general information drunkards to give testimony for the cause. Of these I would be one. Eager Freshman, cramming Sophomore, anxious Junior, hopeless Senior, forget the necessity of half-knowing all things; read this Christmas time, the noblest story, the most woodsy out-of-doors book, and the most exciting tale of adventure you can find.
VERNON L. KELLOGG, '79.
Leland Standford Junior University.
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