Live an active life among people who are doing worth-while things, keep eyes and ears and mind and heart open to absorb truth, and then tell of the things you know, as if you know them.  The world will listen, for the world loves nothing so much as real life.

How to Use a Library

Unsuspected treasures lie in the smallest library.  Even when the owner has read every last page of his books it is only in rare instances that he has full indexes to all of them, either in his mind or on paper, so as to make available the vast number of varied subjects touched upon or treated in volumes whose titles would never suggest such topics.

For this reason it is a good thing to take an odd hour now and then to browse.  Take down one volume after another and look over its table of contents and its index. (It is a reproach to any author of a serious book not to have provided a full index, with cross references.) Then glance over the pages, making notes, mental or physical, of material that looks interesting and usable.  Most libraries contain volumes that the owner is “going to read some day.”  A familiarity with even the contents of such books on your own shelves will enable you to refer to them when you want help.  Writings read long ago should be treated in the same way—­in every chapter some surprise lurks to delight you.

In looking up a subject do not be discouraged if you do not find it indexed or outlined in the table of contents—­you are pretty sure to discover some material under a related title.

Suppose you set to work somewhat in this way to gather references on “Thinking:”  First you look over your book titles, and there is Schaeffer’s “Thinking and Learning to Think.”  Near it is Kramer’s “Talks to Students on the Art of Study”—­that seems likely to provide some material, and it does.  Naturally you think next of your book on psychology, and there is help there.  If you have a volume on the human intellect you will have already turned to it.  Suddenly you remember your encyclopedia and your dictionary of quotations—­and now material fairly rains upon you; the problem is what not to use.  In the encyclopedia you turn to every reference that includes or touches or even suggests “thinking;” and in the dictionary of quotations you do the same.  The latter volume you find peculiarly helpful because it suggests several volumes to you that are on your own shelves—­you never would have thought to look in them for references on this subject.  Even fiction will supply help, but especially books of essays and biography.  Be aware of your own resources.

To make a general index to your library does away with the necessity for indexing individual volumes that are not already indexed.

To begin with, keep a note-book by you; or small cards and paper cuttings in your pocket and on your desk will serve as well.  The same note-book that records the impressions of your own experiences and thoughts will be enriched by the ideas of others.