Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 64, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 March 1919 — NEW IDEAS THROUGH READING [ARTICLE]

NEW IDEAS THROUGH READING

Important to Moot Good Bootay hut : Practically Anythin* la Better Than Nothin*. iJL A teacher who bad the real lntereat of her pupils at heart and who took a genuine Interact In them and theft act! video after as wen as during school hours, was trying her best to reach a particularly trying boy of about thirteen years. Be did not seem at all Interested In his work or studies, and she was attempting to discover just what he was Interested in and how he spent his leisure time Upon Inquiry she found he was fond of taking long and solitary walks, although he disclaimed any Interest In the beautiful or scientific in nature. "But what do you do with yourself?” the teacher Insisted. "What do you think about? You don’t read very much, do you?" The boy denied that he read, and asserted that when he was off alone that way ha liked to think his own thoughts. I wonder what kind of thoughts that poor boy occupied himself with? Hs never read, and he was apparently Impervious to new Ideas, of any sort. He was just content with his own empty thoughts—-they must have been poor and stale and empty, for he tfbver opened his mind to new ones. The best and most efficient way to get ideas Is by reading—and It makes such a difference, therefore, what we read. But it Is decidedly better to read almost anything that comes to hand than nothing at aIL For If one has nothing in the mind at all, such peculiar things are bound to creep In. Isn’t it better to rs-thlnk the thoughts of fine men than to think your own mean little ones I—Exchange.