You, O serious student of many volumes, believe that you have a sincere passion for reading. You hold literature in honour, and your last wish would be to debase it to a paltry end. You are animated by a real desire to get out of literature all that literature will give. And in that aim you keep on reading year after year, and the grey hairs come. But amid all this steady tapping of the reservoir do you ever take stock of what you have acquired$%: Do you pause to make a valuation, in terms of your own life, of that which you are daily absorbing, or imagine you are absorbing$%:
How can a man perform a mental stocktaking$%: How can he put value on what he gets from books$%: How can he effectively test in cold-blood, whether he is receiving from literature all that literature has to give him$%: