Reading

Evening Round-Up
by William Crosbie Hunter

(Page 2 of 14)

Reading

Let Your Final Evening's Reading be Good Stuff

When you spend the evening playing cards, the chances are you come home late, and when you retire it takes perhaps an hour or so before you fall to sleep.

And during the night you dream of cards, of certain hands, of certain circumstances, or certain persons, that were prominent in the evening's game.

The reason you do not go to sleep after an exciting evening is because you have set your nerve carburetor at high tension and forgotten to lower it before you go to sleep.

On the other hand, when you have been reading a restful book, full of good thought, you establish an equilibrium, a relaxed state of nerves and particularly you have switched the current or direction of your day's thoughts. That change spells rest, and you retire and go to sleep easily.

In "Pep" one of the most beneficial suggestions was that you read its chapters one or two each evening, after you had undressed, and just before going to bed.

You will scarcely believe what a wondrous change for the better will happen to you if you make it a rule to have a brain clearing, mental inventory, and nerve relaxation every night before you sleep.

Your brain works at night always; oft-times you have no remembrance of your dreams, but if your last hour, before retiring, was an hour of excitement, tension or unusual occupation you will likely go over it all again in your dreams.

If you will let nothing prevent your period of soliloquy, or evening round-up, you will establish your mental habits into a rhythm that will give you peace, rest and benefit.

In the olden days, when most families had evening worship or family prayers, the members of those households slept soundly and restfully.

Particularly was this so because of the habit formed of getting the mind on peaceful, helpful, comforting, soul-satisfying thoughts that remained fresh on the brain tablets as the members of the home circle went to sleep.

One of the common practices in the home circle is reading, and generally the books or papers read are of the exciting, fascinating, highly colored imaginative type; people read stories of love, adventure, plot or crime, and they dream these same things most every night.

I have found that it pays to read two classes of literature in the same evening. First read your novel, story or fascinating book, and fifteen minutes before you are ready to go to sleep, read some good, wholesome, helpful, uplifting book, and that good stuff will be lastingly filed away in your brain.

Finish your evening with books that are interesting, yet educational. Such books as "Life of the Bee" by Maeterlinck, or any one of Fabre's wonderful books on insect life; "Riddle of the Universe," by Haeckle; Darwin's books; Drummond's "Ascent of Man;" "Walks and Talks in Geological Fields" is a splendid mental night cap; "Power of Silence;" "Physiology of Faith and Fear;" Emerson's "Essays;" Holmes' "Autocrat of the Breakfast Table;" Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam; Tom Moore's Poems; "Plutarch's Lives;" "Seneca;" "Addison;" Bulwer Lytton; Hugo; Carlyle's "Sartor Resartus." This latter book will not fascinate you like Carlyle's "French Revolution," but you will learn to love its fine language, its fine analysis of character, of times, and of things.

There are countless books of the good improving kind. Always save one of them for your solid reading, after you have read light literature or novels. If you will get the habit you will notice great benefits and rapid advancement in your mental apparatus.

You will sleep better, think clearer; you will learn to enjoy mental pleasures more than material pleasures.

Fifteen minutes then to be yours, yours alone, in which you quiet, soothe, strengthen and pacify yourself and add abundant resources and assets.

Let the last reading in the evening be something worth storing up in that precious brain of yours and the good worth-while deposit will grow and produce beautiful worth-while mental fruit.

Verbomania

A Widely Prevalent Modern Disease

The malady Verbomania is spreading rapidly. What's that? You have never heard of Verbomania? Well, then, it's taken from verbosus, the Latin word meaning abounding in words, the using of more words than is necessary. Mania, also Latin, means to rage - excessive or unreasonable desire; therefore, Verbomania is the excessive desire to use more words than are necessary.

There is too much talk nowadays and too little thinking. Some persons start their gab carburetors and they talk and talk mechanically, without any effort on any thought, just like walking, the motion just goes by itself.

Scientists have suggested that perhaps too much talking without thinking is a disease. I don't see why there is any perhaps about it. Disease is an unnatural condition, or function out of its natural order of working.

We know we can sit down and run ideas through our brain without words and we can use a lot of words without ideas.

You have read whole pages in a book without receiving an idea. One can rattle off words and not have ideas. When the fountain of words flows in a desert of ideas, it's Verbomania.

People in all walks of life have the disease; they talk together too much without any reason other than to take up time or make themselves at ease.

Pink teas, receptions and society functions are great rookeries for these Verbomania birds to gather and indulge in their gabfest.

The pianist through long practice is able to play a difficult composition without thinking about it; it's automatic; it's habit in action.

The society dodo bird is just as dexterous in spinning words without thought, as the pianist with his difficult piece.

Our rapid mode of living, our conventions and customs are responsible for much of the Verbomania.

I should like to take my Dictophone to a fussy "afternoon" and record the word evacuations, the footless conversation, the forced pleasantries, the set sentences that mingle into a hum and buzz. A wilderness of words in a barrenness of ideas.

This useless abuse of the use of speech makes headaches, weariness, worry, unrest; it saps strength, lowers pep, and lessens resistance.

The cure for Verbomania is to keep away from these butterfly buzz bees; put the clothes-pin of caution on your lips; spend more time alone with your thoughts. Nourish your idea plants that have been starved; prune your word plants.

Read the first few chapters of "PEP," particularly the chapter in the book about solitude and sizing up things.

Don't expose yourself to the crowds where the Verbomaniacs gather. The disease is contagious; it's easy to acquire and hard to retire.

These are ideas put in type to convey a truth for the benefit of all who read these lines, and it is some truth, too.

Published by Hunter Service Kansas City, Mo., USA
Copyright 1915 by WM. C. Hunter