A common and trivial excuse given by those who read little
is that they have no time for, reading. • • • Many persons in
mature life are conscious of a gentle and luxurious sentiment
in favor of reading, which comes to nothing because they do
not know how to read. With all the good will in the world,
they lack concentration and the habit of dispatch. . . . The
best reading is both intensive and extensive; one reads a little
of everything, and a great deal of some things. The good
reader takes all reading to be his province. Newspapers,
periodicals, books old and new, all present themselves to him
in their proper perspective; they are all grist to his mill, but
they do not go into the same hopper or require the same pro
cess. On the contrary, one of the main distinctions of the
clever reader is that, without varying as to intensity, he varies
almost indefinitely as to pace. This power of reading flexibly
comes mainly, of course,. with practice. For those who have
lacked an early experience of books, the manipulation of them
is never likely to become the perfect and instinctive process of
adjustment which it should be.
. This anxious but unskilled reader is too likely to have a set
gait, so many words to the minute or lines to the hour. An
essay, an editorial, a chapter in a novel or in the Bible, a
scientific article, a short story, if they contain the same num
ber of words, take up just the same amount of this misguided
person's time. No wonder reading becomes an incubus to
him, with the appalling monotony of its procession of printed
words filing endlessly before him. He really has time enough
if he knew how to make use of it. Eben Holden keeps him
busy for a week or more; it should be read in a few hours.
~ . . The trained reader readjusts his focus for each object ive. Milton may be read in words or lines. • Macaulay in sentences,
Thackeray in
. paragraphs, Conan Doyle in pages. The eye,
that is, readily gains the power of taking in words in groups
instead of separately. How large a group the glance can man
age varied with the seriousness of the subject.
PACE IN READING.