Page:Historical Lectures and Addresses.djvu/318

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HISTORICAL LECTURES AND ADDRESSES

are not in your line, pull your hat over your eyes and say they are not. There is no use in attempting to utter right expressions about sunsets if you do not really delight in them. Go about with your mind in a receptive state and ask yourself the meaning of things, and then go back and consult your guide-books, and find out what they say about them. Then your pleasure will really be increased. If you have a question to ask, and you go to a library to find the answer, it is astonishing how many books that you have never dreamt of turning over before become fair of interest, and how much literature you are introduced to if you have a burning curiosity at the bottom of your mind.

I have been attempting very imperfectly to show you the truth of the old adage that we were all taught as boys in a passage in which Cicero praises books: "Pernoctant nobiscum, peregrinantur, rusticantur," which may be translated as follows: "Books speak the night with us, they accompany us on our foreign travels, and go with us into the country". I want to show you that the country can go with you even in your books, and that is, on the whole, a more valuable way of looking at the matter.