By DR. FRANK CRANE
How to start reading books?
If you are an ambitious young man or woman there are few better things you can do than cultivate the habit of taking reading walks.
The next free afternoon you have, stick a book in your pocket and strike out for a tramp in the country or park. Walk a while. Then sit down under a tree and read a few pages. Then walk on and think about what you have read. Of course the benefit you will derive will depend upon what you read.
Choose such books as a small volume of Emerson’s “Essays,” Haldane’s “Daedalus, or Science and the Future,” Russell’s “Icarus,” the “Meditations of Marcus Aurelius,” a book of proverbs or the speeches of Abraham Lincoln. These are a few examples of real thought food. There are many others besides.
Read a page and then think about what you have read. Reading walks get you out in the fresh air, give you healthful exercise, develop your body, as well as feed your mind.
What are the benefits of reading books and walking?
The two legs upon which the successful rise above the mediocre throng are: First, a sound mind, and second, a sound body.
Reading walks develop both of these at the same time.
Out in the open air you will find your brain is clearer, you learn more rapidly, you think straighter.
Almost all of the noted thinkers have been great walkers and on their walks they were rarely seen without a book stuck in some pocket.
Lincoln is said to have carried a book with him when he was engaged in tho lonely task of splitting rails. He fed his mind during moments of rest and gave it something worth whife to think about while his body worked.
One worth while book thus really understood, absorbed, mastered and made your own, is worth a dozen skimmed through without thinking.
It is the thinking that benefits you most.